


The Narrow Line

by americanjedi



Series: Wee Doctor [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU of an AU, Angst, Gen, Interdimensional Travel, Meta, Not actually Wee Doctor canon, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV Multiple, follower celebration, stuff is going to get weird, the actual last story, these people are a mess, we're gonna get meta kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 22:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11633700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanjedi/pseuds/americanjedi
Summary: For a moment the narrow line between world breaks down and the London where Sherlock's path has gone so terribly wrong connects with a world where things are going right.An ending AU of the Wee Doctor series originally published on tumblr to celebrate followers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy one thousand followers! This particular story won’t be as long as the others in the series, but it started growing legs and traveling so we’ll see. The Narrow Line is AU to Wee Doctor cannon, but only because I don’t want to disturb the Watson-Dimmock-Holmes family from life as unusual.
> 
> Beta’ed by Caroline

Davey took the tray of coffee cups out of the waiter’s hands, placed it in front of himself, and began drinking his way through them. There was something businesslike in the motion. He worked his way from one cup to another with a methodical resoluteness, his fingers gripping the rim of the mug to speed up the process. He needed the caffeine to deal with this emergency meeting. To deal with the implications. He’d been up all night interrogating people to try and get the information he needed to deal with the fall out of this impossible thing.

There were no impossible things.

He was an impossible thing, and he’d banged on for years now.

“Davey,” Roost said.

“What?”

The kid tilted his head toward the waiter standing with a gaping open mouth. A moment ago that waiter’s life had been so full of hope and coffee mugs, now look at it. 

Life was cruel, he’d get over it.

Davey motioned to the tray et al. with the mug in his hand, the frothy, fluffy, latte cat inside sloshing around dangerously. It knew its time was coming. Death comes to all artisanal coffees. “Yes, excellent work. I’m keeping these, I’m touching them all, they all belong to me now. That is all.” 

“Sorry,” Roost told the waiter, fingers tapping one two, one two, before turning back to his brother. “When’re John and Sherlock coming?”

Smile tightening over the hollowed-out control Davey was trying to wrench in place, the eldest Watson child set the latte in his hand down. Living semi-nocturnal always had turned Davey pale, but now he looked paper thin, the dusting of freckles standing out on his nose. “Whenever the two of them are done having their panic attacks. And stop tapping, I can feel it against the back of my skull. Just put on another patch if you want another patch. Or smoke, I don’t care. I own the place, do what you want. In fact give me your cigarettes.” 

“I don’t have any.”

“I’ll tell Johnny.”

Roost handed them over.

“Sir, you can’t–” one of the waitresses began to say as he lit up.

“I will burn down your house,” he interrupted, earnest and sincere. The last forty eight hours shone through his steel-trap control, despite the nighttime watercolor smeared under his eyes.

In wisdom, she retreated.

“I made a new friend.”

“Don’t care,” Davey said, leaning back to inhale deep and slow from his cigarette.

“We’re going to make new bees.”

Davey slid him a look, wondered how much the kid remembered. Roost was a much better liar than everyone else gave him credit for. Then he supposed mad people had to be. “You think its ray gun pieces acting up?”

“That made new bees?” Roost asked.

Rolling his eyes, Davey traced an arabesque of tobacco smoke and inhaled again. “I’m your brother, idiot. Don’t give me that sweetpea oblivious act. Your brain can’t stop; you have to have theories about the sudden appearance of extra people in our universe. Of extra people we know. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I have pictures, I have a network. Another Sherlock Holmes walked into Scotland Yard yesterday with his entourage like it was nothing. There do not need to be this many Sherlocks! Never mind whoever else. Younger model Lestrade. Those blond people.”

“I like Gavin.”

“Greg,” Davey corrected.

“When’s Dad coming?”

“That man is not Dad. We don’t have parents, we’re pretend,” Davey had the misfortune of saying just as John approached. He looked a little better than Davey did. The dark circles under his eyes were more blue than deepest violet. Maybe exhaustion looked better on John because the kid wasn’t so pale. With a wide sweep of his arm he beckoned John to come and lean against his side. The boy did, cheek pressed against Davey’s hair, not even bothering to grumble about Davey smoking again. John sighed as his brother wrapped an arm around him and Davey had to fight not to mimic the gesture. Fourteen was far too old for a baby brother. Baby brothers should be small and snarky and easy to carry in case of emergency.

Davey should know, he knew everything. Took his place as elder brother seriously. Had his brothers’ names carved on the inside of his ribs next to the Hiltons and his godchildren. “You alright, Johnny?”

“Look who’s talking,” Sherlock said from where he’d wandered in behind. He looked wound up about half too tight.

“Look indeed. I’m the baddest and the best. Where’s the other lot? I have meetings this afternoon and Roost needs to go and be annoying somewhere.” 

Leaning in as if to tell them something of great import, Roost almost whispered, “Bees with rings.”

The arm around John’s waist gave him a comforting squeeze, if done a bit too hard. John huffed and let Davey take a bit of his weight. Self-regulation was boring anyway.

“Mycroft is probably testing them backwards and forwards and then again for good measure. You’re sure your father took care of Grendel’s organization?” Sherlock asked.

“Razed them to the ground,” John said into Davey’s hair.

Davey gave Sherlock a long look and tossed him the cigarette pack. Man looked neater than Davey, but also a lot closer to the edge. Things would have been easier if the man had just wanted to bang their dad instead of set up a summer cabin in the man’s brain and play secret code pirate treasure map or whatever. Grosser, weirder, but easier. At least then Sherlock would know how to feel about a sudden reappearance of the infamous, the notorious, the W.

“Those were mine!” complained Roost. Because of course he couldn’t give a man a mo’ to meander in exhausted philosophy. Davey flicked his forehead.

“That means they’re mine,” Sherlock cut back with almost none of his usual energy. “I do notice when you lift them, you know.” He spared Davey a look, something a distant cousin to grateful, as he stuffed the pack into his coat. 

Davey would never ask Sherlock how he was doing. Ugh, the very thought gave him hives. He and Sherlock both would rather fall into a hell pit then extend pleasantries to each other. Johnny was Johnny though. If they didn’t stick together the kid would be off getting mowed down somewhere and then trying to walk it off. 

“Mycroft’s probably just trying to keep them from dying of shock. I don’t get why we even have to meet with them, they’ve got nothing to do with us. Is fake Dr. Watson going to proclaim over us and adopt us? I’m too vicious to be adopted, I’m a public health hazard. I stabbed convention in the eye. Let’s all go to Switzerland, there are some great waterfalls there,” Davey said, handing the cat latte over to John.

Roost made a face.

“That’s your opinion, Roost. Switzerland it’s a great idea.” He pressed a kiss that felt as painful as it probably looked against the top of John’s head, then shoved him away. A whole tray of coffee and not one of them as bitter as Davey was feeling. What was wrong with this place? He should have a word with the owner.

“I may have to agree; by all accounts the other Watson isn’t playing dumb.” Sherlock sat down at the table and took his part of the coffee plunder. “Having you verify it is superfluous.”

And a nuclear holocaust just waiting to happen.

“If Mycroft’s mind is set, his mind is set,” John put in. “If he wants us to verify the… person isn’t W, then he’ll get us to verify. We should just get it over with. We’ll make our plan of attack now and then we don’t have to worry about it later. I’d rather not have a sneak attack.”

“It’ll have to be me,” Davey groaned. He realized it the moment John had called him with The News. It was a sweet gesture, though honestly, as if he didn’t know everything. He was Bad Davey, wasn’t he? He’d just hoped that no one else would be smart enough to put it together. Too late now. “John is Dr. Watson: miniature edition, he’d give the game away just walking into the room. Roost will cry.”

“I won’t cry,” Roost protested.

“Don’t be a pain. You’ll call him dad and then cry.” Davey’s heart was speeding up in his chest, ebbing and flowing as his body broke down the caffeine almost as soon as it hit his system. Ta body, what a great help. “I have to go to the lav, I just drank four cups of coffee, nobody decide anything.”

He went and sat in a stall with his feet pulled up against the toilet and texted Elsie. **Weird week. BD**

**Weird work or weird personal?**

**Both? BD**

**You want to come hang out with us? You can do man stuff with Hilton like chop wood and talk about how fit I am.**

**I’m always up for talking about how fit you are. BD**

The door swung open, barely-there footsteps made a short circuit of the two stall lavatory then left again. Roost was a dolt.

**Is Hilton still a no alcohol zone? BD**

****

You really are on the run. Trouble in Clan Watson/b>

**And no to whatever whiskey you were going to bribe my husband with, still no go with meds.**

The door to the bathroom swung open again and in tromped John. He made a beeline for Davey’s stall and banged twice on the locked door. “Stop being an emotional paving brick!”

**Speaking of Clan Watson, I need to go stop being an emotional paving brick. BD**

**That’s my boy. XOXO**

“I know you’re in there, I can smell your belligerence through the door.”

“I can smell your belligerence!” Davey retorted, because he was an idiot. And also because if they didn’t send him to do the interview then Mycroft would find a way to make John do it.

John sighed and leaned against the door. “I’m sorry, David,” John said. Not John, W. “I never intended– I thought we’d be free from all this. I thought I’d be able to keep you safe. I’m so sorry.”

Davey put his feet on the ground.

“It’s okay to not want to do this. For a while you had a father, someone who loved you. Who fixed things for you. Who took the weight onto his own shoulders. It’s okay to miss being able to ask for help. We’ll just tell Mycroft no. He can use his own giant brain to solve his own giant problems.”

Davey opened the door and looked down at Johnny’s little old man face. This would be the part where he would tell him he felt angry, and sad, and nothing at all. But then Johnny was Johnny.

Johnny looked up at him with eyes so angry, and sad, and kind. “It’s okay not to feel anything. He’s not your father.” 

“Neither are you,” Davey said. “I’m the one you’re supposed to be relying on. It’s tough luck since I’m the worst, but that’s life.”

Something complicated happened to Johnny’s face. There was some kind of elastic thing going on with his forehead Davey had neither the patience nor the emotional fortitude to parse.

“Just say it, baby.”

John looked over his shoulder at the lav door then back again with an adorable amount of guilt. Davey wouldn’t know. After a man started getting creative in revising a certain number of human bones with a paving brick, he started to lose guilt. Screaming got tedious after a while, did wonders for killing off sympathy. “Sherlock won’t tell me anything. About what happened. He only told me the basics. I think he would have preferred that everything blew over and I was none the wiser.”

“You want I should set him straight?”

The look Johnny gave him begged him not to be stupid.

“You want I should set you straight then?” He leaned against the stall doorway because he was the coolest. “Good old Maiden Auntie could tell you what you want. He’s got eyes in the skies and in everyone’s phone, and probably on the moon staring down at us.”

“I want you to tell me. I know that something happened and now there’s another Sherlock and another–” His throat clicked when he swallowed. “That there are duplicate people running around London, or I guess running around Mycroft’s secret government dungeon.”

Davey popped out the razor in the bottom of his mouth with his tongue and held it between his teeth to keep from speaking. It pressed against the back of his lips, a reminder, a truth.

“You won’t lie to me about what’s going on,” Johnny told him. “You never lie to me. They all mean well, but no one respects my agency like you do. I know I can rely on you in a way I can’t anyone else. Except the part where you keep calling me baby, because I was never a baby.”

And didn’t the baby just look the most earnest thing to ever exist. Well, that just broke his cold dead heart. The razor slipped away again, he straightened up. “You’re always a baby. You’re also a manipulative brat.”

Johnny just grinned at him. It made Davey burst out a laugh.

“They’ll wonder what we’re doing in here so long.”

“Sherlock won’t ask me,” Baby Brother said, scrunched up his adorable little nose. “Sentiment.”

“Me? Sentimental? Sacrilege!” he shouted and lifted his brother over his shoulder.

“DAVID WATSON! PUT ME DOWN!” John shouted and punched him in the kidney. Davey laughed. That was more like it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for intentional triggering and a short panic attack.
> 
> Other than that, it’s chapter 2, a chance to hear from John. Beta’ed by Caroline

“Mycroft,” Sherlock snarled when he got out of the cab, his coat flapping around him as he went. John waited with a sigh for the man to get out of his way. How did he get his coat to behave like that? Did the Holmes drama gene manifest itself in some kind of invisible fan following him around? He peered under Sherlock’s arm and sighed. The knocker had been straightened again.

Sherlock raced up the stairs before John had pulled out his card to pay the cabbie. The resulting sound, all at once too close and a distant roar, shook the windows of the townhouse and made John seize up tight, almost made him drop his wallet. He turned wide eyed at 221B, pushing his back against the cab as something shattered inside and the spittoon Sherlock had ordered online went flying out the upstairs window. At least the window was open.

The spittoon went clang, clang, clang on the pavement and a dog walking past barked at it in delight.

“That looks exciting,” the cabbie laughed. “Always an adventure, you two.”

John looked at her and tried a charming smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” the cabbie tugged on her hat. “I’ll put it on your tab. Stop your whatever-he-is from bringing down the whole street. Slows down traffic when someone calls the police.”

“IT’S MY HOUSE, MYCROFT!” Sherlock bellowed from inside. Mrs. Hudson darted out the front door and into Speedy’s.

It must really be something then.

By the time John got up to the top of the stairs, it became clear why. There, framed in the doorway, was a Sherlock. Not his Sherlock. His Sherlock was slightly to the left, glowering at someone he couldn’t see, but could guess at by the way the detective’s hand clenched at his side. His Sherlock had put on about a century of gravitas and filled the room with waves of presence. His face glowed with fury, like lightening, like the coils of a hot stove. The shock of white at his temple made him look like some mad scientist about to subsume the world by force of will. 

“Let’s be reasonable,” Mycroft said, as if that ever worked ever.

Sherlock picked up something to hock at Mycroft, saw it was John’s mug and set it down to throw a petri dish instead. 

When John’s gaze swung fully to the other Sherlock he felt a rush of vertigo. His fingers trembled against his thighs. It was strange to see Sherlock looking so young, without the white at the temples and the laughter lines creased in around his eyes. The other Sherlock looked cold and hard and alien. He also looked like John’s Sherlock. The Sherlock he had been– that he’d– back when–

He felt his breath go funny in his lungs. Felt his ribs tighten. That wasn’t right. Ribs didn’t–

This Sherlock wasn’t his either because he was– PAINlonelyPAIN, and he’d been shot, was still getting used to moving with scar tissue in his chest, and this Sherlock was using again. His face was drawn in confusion and anger and the weight of his unhappiness dulling his feeling under apathy.

John took a step forward, having to stop the man from feeling that way, having to stop it because it hurt. But when he did

He couldn’t breathe.

There was a man.

There was a

A Not Him.

“I don’t want them here, I don’t want him here. I don’t want him a thousand meters from Baker Street. I don’t even want him in London.” His Sherlock jabbed a finger at the Other Man. 

At the other John.

At the John Watson.

His Sherlock was hissing, hissing hissing at Mycroft. “You knew how I felt about it! What were you possibly thinking?”

There was a nice looking lady who moved from behind the Not Him and was staring at John with a strange mix of shock and realization that were strobing back and forth. She was pregnant. Usually John liked pregnant ladies. But. It was too loud. The room was. TOO LOUD.

And since Sherlock was pointing at the– the– other Watson, John had to look. He had to look. At the real John, the grown up John. The–

“Hey, obviously some years have passed,” other Watson said, hands up. Had his face always been that elastic? “But I haven’t- we haven’t done anyth–” John finally caught his eye, his head turned, he stared, mouth still open.

John wheezed once, twice, a third time. A troupe of spots danced across his vision. He couldn’t feel his fingertips. Muscle memory moved a heel back to catch him before he toppled down. His Sherlock made a low sound, soothing and pained. Anger turned to dust under the tremendous weight of Sherlock’s sorrow, his hand reached out – pale and empty. The sound John made in response was too high, too young.

“I’llgomakesometea,” John said and darted into the kitchen. Pressed his belly against the tiled counter, bent his head against the weight of the emotional noise.

“Oh John,” Mycroft breathed out from the living room.

“You reptile. What did you think would happen?” Sherlock snarled back. Then there was the stomp of feet and snap of the kitchen doors pulled closed.

John broke the first two teacups he tried for but got the third from cupboard to counter easy enough. It rattled against the tile as he tried to untangle his hand from it. He made his hands into fists at his side and tried to press the trembles out against his thigh. Looked at the blue-green tile and the white grout. Focused back and forth between the two like one of those optical illusions. Young girl, old lady.

“John,” said Sherlock from the doorway.

“It’s fine. It’s fine, kettle’s almost ready,” he wheezed. He turned toward the stove. Had he turned on the kettle? He hadn’t. He plucked it up, filed it, placed it down, turned the–

“John.”

“Yeah,” he said. Nodded. Remembered the glass and spun toward the cleaning cupboard. “I’ll get the broom.”

In one long step Sherlock was in front of him, wrapping long arms around him and tucking him close like he used to when John was a child and had bad dreams. Hand curled around the base of his skull and using his height to block out every terrible thing that was happening. John wheezed into Sherlock’s chest – the sound like a dying motor. His hands fisted in Sherlock’s blazer, grabbing and letting go and holding on even tighter.

“I’m here. I’m here with you. I’m not going to leave you. I’m right here. Breathe with me. Copy my breathing.” Sherlock’s breath drifted over the top of his head, his thumb stroking the soft slant between neck and skull. “In and out, John. Just like we’ve practiced.”

John tried, he really did, but his breath started whooping in his throat and then he was sobbing into the space under Sherlock’s chin, shaking at how unfair it was the other Watson got his whole life and John had to try so hard, had to die to get what little he had. He bowed in Sherlock’s arms, keening until he ran out of sound, until he could speak again. Sherlock bobbed with him, keeping him close.

“It’s not fair,” he rasped.

“Oh John. No it’s not.” Sherlock was a pillar, a mountain, a continent and John clung to him. “It’s not fair at all. I’m banning Mycroft from Christmas forever.”

John let out a juddering laugh against Sherlock.

“There you are, there you are. You’ll be alright. Let’s try breathing again. You’ll have to make do with me. I’d call Davey for you, but he’d probably call a tactical airstrike and overthrow the British government.”

John laughed again, except no, that wasn’t funny. That was probably pretty true. 

“Are you alright now?” Sherlock pulled back to get a good look at him, eyes comfortingly analytical as they flitted over John’s face. Anger still wrenched at the spring of his jaw, but the rest of the detective’s expression was gentle, blank, familiar.

“I’m fine.” It was hard to look right at Sherlock, to be seen, but he was supposed to be honest. To let himself be looked at.

They were a family.

“I’m here,” Sherlock told him, his hands steady on John’s face. “I’m here with you.”

John pressed forward and squeezed Sherlock as hard as he had to for his gratitude to transfer into the man’s bones. When he pulled back to scrub at his face Sherlock was resettled, elegant as ever.

“I don’t have anywhere else to be until Donovan gets back to me,” Sherlock told him, handed over his handkerchief. “And we all know how punctual she is.”

“That was dumb, I’m sorry.”

“It was expected. What Mycroft wanted to have happen as proof no doubt, he’s banned from New Year’s too.” He stacked his hands on top of John’s head and leaned his chin there, thinking. “Bad Davey was right, that man isn’t W. W would have had me following orders with a tilt of his head and something… something interesting. He would have known Mycroft was using him to bait a trap the second the lump suggested a trip here. He never would have let Mycroft… Your father was always kind. Always interesting. It’s one of the ways I can tell you’re his son. Nothing against that Dr. Watson. Just. Prefer this one.”

John was quiet from where his forehead pressed against Sherlock’s jacket.

“I’ll go run them off.” Sherlock pulled back to get a look at John, nodded, and pulled his designer jacket into its designer fit. “Where have you hidden my harpoon?”

“It’s not their fault Mycroft is the worst,” John muttered, breaking away to find the broom and dustpan and try to reorganize himself. His hands were still shaking but he didn’t feel like he needed to scream anymore.

“No, but this is your home.” Sherlock stood quiet for a moment, watching John’s back. The man seemed to have run dry of sentiment. “And you feel things as strong as your father did.”

They didn’t talk about what feeling things got his father.

“I… I’m okay now. They.”

Sherlock stopped and watched him.

“It wasn’t their fault. It’s their home too.”

“Surely you’re not saying you want them to stay the night.”

John felt himself tighten up before he made himself relax. “No, I don’t think I should see him, see them for a while. Just don’t be cruel to them, please. It’s not their fault.”

His request and Sherlock’s ire did short battle until the detective nodded. “Stay here for a little while and do the tea thing.”

John’s mouth ticked up at the corner. “Sure.”

Tea was familiar, tea was safe. A ceremony of hospitality and familiarity. He pulled out the milk, the sugar, the tray. He could hear Sherlock on the other side of the door. “Mycroft, you’re uninvited to Christmas. And New Year’s. And whatever else I decide later. Other… people go somewhere else.”

“This is our flat,” other Sherlock said. There was an origami fold to his voice; creased too sharp, too much pleated up underneath.

“Sherlock,” the woman said, warning. She had a nice voice.

“No this is our flat,” John’s Sherlock cut in. “Here’s my bank card, go rent something.”

“Who was that boy?” other Watson said. His voice was kinder at least, gentler.

“None of your business. Get out.”

“He has a right to know,” other Sherlock said in the way that meant he mostly wanted to know.

“Are you an idiot?” Sherlock asked, incredulous.

“Look. Sherlock, my Sherlock. Obviously there’s some stuff going on, we should go, give them some room,” soothed Other Watson.

“But–”

“So help me, Mycroft,” Sherlock said, ready to jump ranks and skip the end of the conversation entirely. “I have my thumb ready to dial David. I can call him in a second, let him hear what the boy’s breathing sounds like. Get them out of the flat, or I call him right now.”

“Alright then,” Mycroft said after a tense second. “Perhaps it’s best if we leave.”

Sherlock laughed. “Best if we leave.”

There were soft steps on the landing and John looked away from where he was eavesdropping to see one of Davey’s bad news bullies standing on the landing. Tom if he remembered it right. The two of them looked at each other quietly before Tom gave him a pained sort of nod, waving a thick folder at him. John looked at it. Tom waggled it a couple more times before they inched just far enough into the kitchen to set it on the counter and then darted to the front door.

Tim was aware then, Bad Davey wouldn’t have acted with that much tact on his own.

John picked it up on his way to shut the kitchen door. He didn’t want to see the merry group of pilgrims on their exit from 221B. The first thing in the folder was big glossy photo of a hovering static in the air, the next was of a small group of people walking down the pavement. CCTV photos. The timestamp between the pictures was only seconds apart. Under that were written up statements. Eyewitness accounts. Davey’s Network, word of mouth racing, outpacing cameras and computer systems. John sat down with the folder at the table and started going through it.

“All due respect, Mr. Holmes,” floated in Tom’s voice from the living room. “And Mr. Holmes. And Mr. Holmes? Holmeses, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Don’t tell me,” the lady said. “One of the infamous David’s men.”

“Yes ma’am,” Tom said, all manners. “Accommodations have been set up for your stay in London. Please come with me.”

“What if we don’t want to go with you?” Other Sherlock asked.

“Please, sir. You can’t tell me you want to stay here when your presence is so upsetting to The Boy,” Tom answered. At least they weren’t calling him The Baby anymore.

“That’s not an answer,” Sherlock asked.

“Then I’ll have to dart you,” Tom answered. “I’m an expert at darting people. Still I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you. There are three of you and it would be tedious. Plus she’s pregnant and the boss gets funny about pregnant ladies. Plus I haven’t had tea, so if you’re awake I’ll have an excuse to stop somewhere for dinner. We can go get curry, everyone likes curry.”

“Well,” the lady said. “That’s me sold!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or Auntie Nopes Right Out of The Sex Stuff, A Warning Tale About Making Friends with The Nortons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: mild innuendo and overbearing friends
> 
> Caroline betas and everything is AU.

There were footsteps past Tim’s room, they stopped and turned back. Padded from wearing socks. > Godfrey. “What are you doing?”

“Packing,” Tim told him. “I need to go to London.” Tim followed the path of his suitcase zipper with his eyes. Looked at his tablet. Six out of fourteen desired planes rerouted. He could get to the airport in forty-five minutes. Faster if he changed the stop lights too.

A dog nosed at his wrist. > Ernesta. She liked him best. Her ears felt like velvet as he rubbed them. Tim felt exhausted from arguing down Bad Davey, trying to lay down lines of reason that the man kept bashing through and climbing over. The man needed to learn more than one way to love. Some way other than razors and axes and sledge hammers. 

Footsteps padded into the room, padded to Tim’s other side. He watched Godfrey pick up the tablet, watched the place where it had been. “So you’re the one causing major panic on the eastern seaboard.”

“I need a plane.”

Godfrey was silent. The silence was telling. “What’s got you so spooked you can’t wait for me to get back from the courthouse? That you can’t ask me for help. You forget how to text, Auntie?”

Tim looked at him. > Godfrey was too strong and agile for Tim to wrestle the tablet back. > He didn’t want to anyway. > Nothing to do but be honest about it. “I’m your house guest. What should I have texted you?”

“You and your straight lines,” Godfrey huffed, pushing the tablet into Tim’s chest. “You’re lucky I’m a lawyer. No need to play me. Have your tablet back if you want it so much.”

The tablet screen rippled from how tight Tim gripped it. 

“Auntie,” Godfrey said again.

“I work best with a partner.” He scrubbed his face. Felt tingly. That would be the nerves. “I don’t do well alone, but I forget sometimes when I’m scared.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“I need to get to London. Something impossible has happened and I’m worried if I tell you what it is then it’ll put you in danger.” Or that it would finally be the last straw. That he wouldn’t believe him.

Godfrey always waited.

“I may be linear, but you’re logical. I don’t know if you’d believe me.”

“You’re impossible. Just try me.” Godfrey’s hands were warm on his shoulders:

1\. Warm

2\. Heavy

3\. Comforting

“There was some sort of tear between realities and a man who looks like my dead brother came through. Mycroft Holmes, the government man, brought the man to my nephew’s house to try to prove whether or not he was my brother.”

Godfrey’s face went soft. “Oh, Auntie. The little grumpy one, the one like you. How are you feeling?”

“Furious. I crashed the system for Mycroft’s office. And then for his whole team. And then the whole of the Ministry of Transportation and their secret government plots,” he confessed. “I stopped there. Ministry of Transportation. What a pretentious idea.”

“How much of it?”

“Enough,” he groused. “That’s it then? How much of it?”

Godfrey shrugged. “Wanted to know how upset he’d be when he saw you again.”

“I can’t tell if you believe me or not.” Squinting didn’t help decipher the steel wall that was Godfrey’s expression. Still, Godfrey’s hands on his shoulders: warm > heavy > comforting > Godfrey was worried and trying not to show it. At least that was the sort of thing John would say.

“That doesn’t matter. I get people what they need, and you need a plane.” Godfrey pulled out his phone and sent off a text. “Go have a sandwich or something. I just picked up that hummus you like to smear all over everything, I’ll repack.”

“You don’t need to repack.”

Godfrey lifted a pair of trousers out of his bag that were perfectly serviceable. He lifted his eyebrow and said nothing else. Tim didn’t want another conversation about why he should wear designer or bespoke.

“Fine,” Tim allowed. “A sandwich.”

“Make one for me too!” Godfrey yelled after him. “Destroying politicians’ sense of self-worth always makes me ravenous!”

The first few minutes in the kitchen were spent with his eyes closed, feeling the cascading click of his checklist fall into place. His mind assembled the to-dos with the precision of a factory worker. An efficient line from point A to point B.

>Plane

>Fly

>Drive

>Hug John

>Fix the problem

The sandwiches came together under his hands with the same ease.

>Bread

>Hummus

>Tomatoes

>Posh gourmet meat

>Cold bacon

>Bread

“I know you can dress well when you want to do so,” Godfrey said, a bag over each shoulder and pulling a rolling suitcase. “The question is why you want to look like a homeless person. Thanks.” He pulled the sandwich out of Tim’s hands. “Let’s go.”

Three bags. > Irene.

Why would Irene go with them?

Three bags. > Overpacking?

“Auntie,” Godfrey snapped at him. “I said let’s go.”

“Don’t snap at me,” he grumbled. “I’m not a dog,” he said, as he heeled to walk along at Godfrey’s shoulder with Ernesta pressed against his leg. > She wanted some of his sandwich.

Before Godfrey could sass off at him, the man’s phone let out a throaty laugh. There was no point trying to have a conversation with the man when Irene called. The world could end and Godfrey would answer the phone to have a little chat with her. “Light of my life, fire of my loins, stars in my sky,” Godfrey answered, motioning Tim through the door so he could lock up after him. “Have you talked to Lazart then? Good, if you talked to her you’re safe, your contract covers artistic differences. Of course, I get you the best contracts. No, you were very right to walk out on rehearsal. You’re not just in a class past beautiful, you’ve got exemplary talent and no time to mess with over dramatic man-babies.”

He laughed at whatever Irene said back.

Three bags. > Irene, he guessed.

“Flattery will get you absolutely everywhere, not that you need the help.” He handed one of the suitcases off to Tim. “Of course I brought your diamonds.”

Tim had to trot after him to keep up, Ernesta stayed pressed close to his side, he scratched her behind the ears again.

“Ugh, no. Not those. Darling, they’re too garish. Your silk looks better with the ruby earrings. If you want some diamond earrings that bad we’ll get some in London.” He hummed along to whatever Irene said on the other side of the phone, letting Tim eat his sandwich in peace. It was a fast elevator, but Tim had learned to eat fast.

There wouldn’t be any peace once Tim and Irene got together and started in on him. Ding went the elevator and Godfrey pulled him into the lobby with their arms interlocked. With America being as it was one would think Godfrey wouldn’t make such a show of dragging him around, but then Irene and Godfrey were New York’s power couple. People wrote fanfiction about them. Irene sometimes read the dirty stuff out loud at the breakfast table. Tim liked the one (“Historical AU, darling,” Irene had said, adjusting her tablet.) where Godfrey and Irene were competing pirate captains. All the racist fanfic had a tendency to disappear from the archives. So did the stories where Godfrey or Irene abused the other and then died horribly so some vapid, needy self-insert could marry the surviving party. Those stories were disappeared with a vengeance until Godfrey sat Tim down and handed him a stack of girl scout cookies and had a talk to him about how it was sweet and all but he and Irene were both adults and the First Amendment was a thing. Just because someone online was the creepiest didn’t mean Tim had to crash their computer and delete their online profile.

Tim never showed up in any of the fic though. Godfrey could wear Tim like a scarf and he’d still be in the lawyer’s sparkling shadow. For which Tim gave prayers of gratitude every night.

“After all the work I went through to find him his illegitimate Russian progeny,” Godfrey continued on the phone, nudging Tim in the ribs to get his attention back. “He better have champagne in the private jet. What are we? Heathens? Oh, cherished beloved, no I’m cool. Of course Tim made me a sandwich. Yeah, he’s awesome. Yeah, Mycroft, I know, I wish I could have seen you drag him. Baby Watson is like a Tiny Tim, how could he sin against Tiny Tim? What? Ha! I totally didn’t notice that. Tiny Tim, yeah. No, we have to go, yeah. Yeah, I have the minimum caliber necessary to make him rethink his life choices. No, of course I packed the mink, not the fox. Who are you even talking to?” Godfrey’s laughter was so bright, so happy. “You’re welcome. That’s why you stay married to me after all. Yeah, the car’s here. Meet you at the airport.”

Tim blinked, there was a car in front of them, not Godfrey’s usual. Ernesta sat at attention until Godfrey opened the door and nodded her in. 

“Here,” he handed the phone to Tim. “Talk to Irene while I get Ernesta buckled in.”

Tim looked at the phone for a moment before sighing and pressing it to his ear. “Hello?”

“How are you holding up?” Irene asked. There was the sound of something in the background, voices and then echoes of footsteps. She always surprised him when her voice pulled in its edge like that. When it turned kind. He supposed it shouldn’t, gentleness was as vital to being a dom as strictness, and she’d had a great deal of success at that profession for quite some time.

“I’m.” He tried to figure out what he was feeling, but feelings weren’t in straight lines. “Upset.”

“Godfrey’s really worried about you.”

“Is he?”

“You’re his second best friend, of course. Just.” She made a sort of tching sound. “Don’t worry about taking care of him, or sparing his tender feelings, or whatever Watson-esque nonsense you thought was a good idea when you didn’t call him immediately and make him take care of your family emergency. Despite talking like a teenage girl outside of the courtroom, Godfrey’s an adult man. Let your friend be your friend.”

Tim watched the click and shift of the traffic lights, the turn signals, saw their pattern in his head. He kept waiting for the world to catch up to where he’d been and wanting it to stop. Wanting everything to have been frozen solid with W’s death, the curtain pulled so his family could proceed:

1\. safe

2\. silent

3\. secret

He covered his face with his free hand. His palm was callused hard, that winter in Russia had nearly turned him into a pumice stone.

“That was actually really nice advice,” Tim told Irene.

“Do you remember how your brother made you a better person?” she asked him.

Tim swallowed, let Godfrey pull him into the car.

“Yeah,” she answered for him. “Godfrey’s made me a better friend. I’ve made him a better person, made him not to be afraid to love things, to fight for more than himself. Get his teeth out. Oh, Godfrey, love his teeth. But you don’t like to hear about that, do you Auntie? Confirmed bachelor.” She laughed and he let out a sad huff of breath. She meant well, she was just in the habit of flaying things out of people.

“Both of us are making the other better,” she continued. “That’s what the Lifetime channel says a marriage is supposed to be. It would be even more ideal if we wanted to have screaming hot sex together against the wall, he’s got the biceps to hold me up for hours too. And I’ve heard some really interesting things about mustaches.”

“Please,” Tim said, curling up in his seat. “No sex stuff.”

“Have you seen him, darling?” Irene laughed. “Everything about Godfrey is sex stuff. Seventy-year-old white Southern Baptist judges question their life choices when they see Godfrey. Have you seen his–”

“Nope!” Tim said and tossed the phone to Godfrey. He could swear he heard her laughing through the speaker.

“Tim,” Godfrey said, ringing off his phone and secreting it somewhere.

“Not right now,” Tim told him. “I just. I want to just eat my sandwich.”

Tim just felt… He felt:

1\. tired

2\. angry

3\. scared 

He had thought everything was okay now. That he’d fixed everything, no more loss, no more than the regular kind at least. Everything was straight lines, point A to point Z, easy and sleek. Like Godfrey with his hacksaw ruthlessness and his secondary school sweetness, or Irene with her enameled sensuality and the welcoming velvet of her playfulness. They didn’t always make Tim… comfortable. They were all about stroking hands and sly laughter and guns to people’s heads, and all that sort of thing – even before his libido had just about died with his wife, he’d been more about soft hands and soft sleep pants on a Sunday morning then corsets and leather and sex that had a set up and take down time.

He was a sort of pet for them. An oddity. They were rare glittering birds of paradise in silk and gemstones, and he was soft, worn in, knew how to roll into spooning position in his sleep. They curled around him after some of their all night parties, portioning off his body like children who had to share the same teddy bear.

And Godfrey was… kind. He was:

1\. kind

2\. quiet

3\. wise 

He was the vault where Tim’s secrets lay, all but the one that wasn’t his secret to tell. Tim told him he loved John, but wanted his brother back. Told him Grendel killed his children. Told him he felt like one of those bugs with the different forms, or like a frog. He’d metamorphosed from a tadpole and now he was out of step with everyone. Godfrey knew what people needed.

“We’re here,” Godfrey told him, quiet. Irene was already at the base of the stairs going into the plane, leaning against the railing and flirting with the stewardess who looked about beside herself. His large hand rested for a moment on Tim’s shoulder. “We’ll be there soon, Auntie.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote the beginning of this chapter about five or six times and finally just started where it wanted to start. Mary meets some friends and tries to figure out the Watson clan and the rule of five person Risk. Only not Risk obviously, because that's copyrighted. Caroline betaed again.

When Mary woke in the night she felt positively ravenous. Her hunger begun an internal civil war. On one hand this was the most comfortable she’d ever been, at least in a long time. The bed was unbelievable, probably made out of angel dreams. She and her husband and their baby were in what seemed to be an entirely different world. That or the sort-of-drug-induced hallucinogenic fever dream that had her concerned for her health. But one rarely went to sleep and then woke up again in those sorts of dreams.

She’d done all those things one was supposed to do to ensure one was awake. She focused on her five senses. She pinched herself. She spot read a couple of the books on the shelf in the family room. A little antique book of poetry called The Wind of Song that seemed to mostly be a random assortment of verse. The thirteenth volume of watercolor illustrations called September Light. The whole library seemed to be a collection of art books and the sort of appealing, understated, never-heard-of-it charm that meant they were worth real money. She lifted the wooden lid of a rare books cabinet and closed it again when she saw what genuinely looked like a Gutenberg Bible.

The bedside clock said it was one in the morning. Excellent. Anxiety and experience joined with the support her lower back was getting to keep her bound to bed.

But if this David character wanted to kill them, they would have been dead already. And she was hungry. 

Besides nothing had happened all day. She’d tried to map out the house, see if she couldn’t get lucky and find some ceremonial swords or something among the frankly outrageous amount of artwork. If it came down to it there were some promising looking bronze figures.

John had discovered an enormous war-room table in the corner of the family room.

“I looks like Risk. We’d play it sometimes when we had a lot of time to kill.” He picked up one of the small figures. “Looks like there are five teams. That doesn’t look like Earth though, or like normal soldiers.”

Mary moved to peer down at the table. The territories were a tight packed series of countries traced in some sort of metal laid into the table top, Talimenios, Haemill, Plesiochronous, a sprawl of names she wasn’t even sure the origin of – except Plesiochronous. That seemed Greek. “Maybe they got tired of trying to invade Russia.”

The names had to mean something.

Maybe they meant nothing.

The rest of the day was John trying not to eat all the hobnobs, Mary trying to go easy during her westward expansion. Sherlock first assembled all three of their phones in front of himself to scroll through and then flipped onto his back and went into his mind palace.

Greg showed up in time for tea looking a bit annoyed, but no worse for the wear.

They went on that way, Sherlock laid out like a dead man while the three of them set up defensive lines until night when Sherlock disappeared upstairs without a word.

Now here she was.

She knew there was ice cream downstairs, she’d seen it during tea.

John stirred when she tried to roll herself out of bed, but was asleep again when she shushed him. She looked down at his sleeping face and wanted to press a kiss to his cheek, but it was too late – too early – to deal with his paranoia.

Feet in slippers, she waddled her way past Japanese water colors, what looked like a Monet, a whole display case of teapots and down the narrow wooden stairs that lead to the kitchen.

There was a man sitting in the kitchen. He was drinking coffee while he read a newspaper by the faint light of the oven light. The kitchen knives were at the far counter on the other side of the man, the man’s legs were longer than Mary’s. The pots and pans were hanging in Mary’s reach. If she retreated backwards she’d have to turn her back to go up the stairs. There was another door at the other side of the kitchen that probably led to the dining room. There was the narrow hall that lead back to the foyer but trying for that could be an exercise in futility.

When the man looked up at her, his eyes were dead. Flat like obsidian. He stood, his limbs controlled in their movements. 

“Excellent,” he said. “You’re still awake.”

“Yes,” she said, aware of how huge her stomach was before her. There was a bit of a stumble behind her and someone took half a dozen steps to keep from plowing into her back. She half turned her head, measuring the degrees to keep the dead eyed man in sight, to look at Greg, who seemed to have caught onto the situation pretty quick.

“What’s going on?” he asked, voice copper sharp, his body close enough she could feel the sleep warmth of him.

The man’s flat eyes looked between the two of them and he gestured toward that second door with a motion that looked out of a period drama. “Dr. Watson respectfully requests a moment of your time.”

That sounded promising. She had assumed… She had assumed that John was dead, otherwise why would that boy have reacted as strongly as he did? Maybe it was more complicated than that. People had a tendency to be more complicated than one would expect. John though, she could work with John.

“Dr. Watson? You aren’t one of Bad Davey’s men then?” Greg asked, arms crossed.

“Of course I am, no one else would be allowed in. But I assist Dr. Watson on occasion.”

“And Bad Davey doesn’t object?”

The man tilted his head at Greg. “Dr. Watson requested my assistance.”

There was a whole series of events with a whole pedigree of choices and changes that they were not part of just as it was clear they weren’t part of this world.

“Sure,” she shrugged. “Let’s go.”

The dead eyed man opened the door with a chivalry that it suddenly became clear he had been instructed to use in connection with her. A command for gentleness. She stepped into the room, with a breath that was stopped in her throat.

It wasn’t John seated at the long wooden table, it was the boy from before. No, not a boy, he had to be closer to thirteen.

When she looked at the young man he went soft and bashful. His cheeks tinged pink and his gaze only flickered toward her from under his eyelashes. “Hello,” he said, pulling his shoulders square. The boy looked just like John, almost moved like him. She thought she’d imagined it before, but no. That was John’s son, sitting right there in front of her. Too old to be hers, but he was surely John’s.

Mary sat down hard in her chair, not entirely sure how she got there.

The boy cleared his throat. “I’m. I’m John, John Watson. Sorry for the late hour, but I figured you’d be up for a midnight snack.” His shortness was belied by the denseness of his build, compact but with an underlining comfort in his own skin that gave him his own sense of gravity. He spoke with the even intonation of an adult. Each word had the well-practiced precision that even intelligent children rarely used.

“Doctor?” Greg asked, moving to sit next to Mary. His hair flared up on one side.

John, of course John, letting out a burbling giggle. “Yeah, it’s complicated. You can call me Johnny if you want. People call me that sometimes. It might help you. To keep me separate from your– ” he made a swallowed down sound, too basely animal to be anything as complicated as distress. It could have been a gag. Even amoebas expelled foreign bodies.

“What can we do for you, Dr. Watson?” Mary asked, her voice coming from far away.

“I wasn’t expecting you both.”

“Sorry, kid,” Greg shrugged. “One rose per thorn.”

His small mouth curled up in the corners and he huffed out a little laugh. Just like a cat’s, just like her John’s mouth curled up.

“I didn’t think.” He stopped, swallowed, looked down at his hands. They were neat hands, squared and just starting to get too big for his body. “I didn’t think it would be fair for you to sit in a strange house in a strange town and not have any information. I know this is a disorienting feeling for you,“ the boy said. The kindness in his eyes when he looked up at them.

“The hardest thing is waiting. And not knowing. It’s the worst thing, there were times when I.” The end of the sentence was snapped off between his teeth, it revealed too much about him. His eyes stared like the eyes of an old soldier. Mary had seen children like him. Little combat veterans who were too serious. The young man carried implication with him like a shadow. Anyone with enough experience could see it looming over him. As soon as she was aware of the weight of gaze becoming a boulder crushing her heart, he turned his head with a jerk. 

Johnny bent to the side to rustle around in something and bring up an old raggedy scrapbook. It looked well-used and well-loved.

“The beginning is just cases I kind of watched Sherlock solve while I lived on the street? But it might give you an idea about things. The universal differences.”

“Why were you living on the street?” Greg asked.

“Well, um,” Johnny said and flipped ahead to a series of selfies with a narrow faced redhead. “Oh, well, never mind that.”

“Who’s the boy?” Mary asked.

“Roost,” he said, tight and awkward, and turned the page. “Here’s the case with the ears in the box, and here’s my write up. It’s all our cases, I thought it might… Well, I thought it might help to help you get your bearings.”

His notes were neat, meticulous. Through. She recognized a military report when she saw it. He half pushed it across the table and left it there, seemingly unwilling to deal with it any more than that. Greg pulled that toward himself for obvious reasons. “We know each other in this world?”

“Yeah.” Johnny’s smile was a delight. “Cause of the cases, and also because Sherlock thinks football is boring.”

“You follow Arsenal?” Greg looked at him with comical weight.

That delightful cat’s smile curled up again. “Of course. Are there any other teams?”

“There’s a lad,” he smiled at him.

“There’s something else.” Johnny winced at Mary again. “I know my parentage is pretty obvious.”

“You’re my husband’s son,” Mary told him. She’d always been a bit possessive.

“Yeah, um,” he said in a way that didn’t quite fit. The dead-eyed man took a half step forward from where he had disappeared into the wallpaper like some kind of magical body guard. Greg and Mary jumped, but Johnny just looked at the man with a fluffed up bit of irritation. “I’m fine, you don’t have to look so worried about me.”

Mary looked at the man’s flat expression and decided to take the boy’s word for it.

“There’s something else,” Johnny told them. “Family album.” This one was leather, neat, JHW stamped in the front in gold.

“Family album,” Mary repeated. Let the boy say everything on the tip of his tongue.

“Well.” The young man’s face spasmed tight, closed up. “I thought it might help.”

“To say what you can’t.”

“Any pictures of me as a baby were,” he covered his mouth to keep in a giggle, his eyes looking a bit horrified at himself. The dead-eyed man fidgeted. “The pictures were burned up. These are the pictures I have of my family.”

She nodded.

“Just. You can look.”

He pushed the second scrapbook across at them.

There was John, her John, looking pale and just recovered from something terrible with a sharp faced ginger boy leaning close to him, their foreheads touching. A couple pictures after it that looked like they were taken by a professional photographer at someone’s wedding. Her John talking to a tall, broad ginger man in gold glasses. John’s hand was on his arm, a comforting gesture the man was leaning into. Another with John’s arm around the boy from before, Roost, Roost’s face suffuse in delight and affection. Roost with a plate of tiny quiche. The ginger man in a bear hug with an enormous man with a sweet face.

She flipped through the pages. Johnny and Sherlock at a Christmas party, Molly with her arm around Johnny, Greg cheering at what looked like a football game with Johnny and a small girl with thick dark hair and dark eyes.

“Who’s that?” Greg slapped a hand on the scrapbook page, holding it open.

Johnny went pale as a sheet. “I’m sorry.”

“Who is that?” Greg had half risen in his seat.

“It’s your daughter. Rosey.”

Greg sat down again.

Johnny immediately leaned forward, fiddling with the photo and popping it out of the stick on corners holding it in place. “Here,” he held it out to him.

“Am I still married?” Greg asked, voice tight.

“No, your wife, Alice…” He swallowed. If Mary didn’t know any better she would have missed what it was. A delaying tactic. The young man was far more in control of their conversation than he played it. “You’re divorced, but you have a really good relationship. Summer holidays together and everything.”

“Alice?” Greg said. “My wife’s name was Jennie.”

“Oh,” Johnny blinked, that at least seemed real. “Well. Sorry?”

Greg grabbed the photo and looked at it. “My daughter. I have a kid. Why did Alice and I get divorced?”

“Well, because.” John looked back and forth between them. He pulled out his phone, typed something on it and then showed the screen to Greg at an angle. 

Greg’s reaction was to turn bright red and press his lips together. “Oh. That.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know if you…” Johnny looked at Mary again, then back at Greg. “It. Well.”

“Yes. Well. That was very thoughtful,” Greg said with the sort of primness one expected from a school marm and very purposefully looked at no one in the room.

“So let’s talk about something else!” Johnny said looking just as embarrassed as he put away his phone. His face matched Greg’s in alarming shades of red. He busied himself with flipping pages until he found a picture of the older of the two gingers. His face had a bit of a latent natural aggression to it, a face like a knife. He leaned back against a brick wall, his hand a fist in Johnny’s hair pulling the boy against his side. The man was attractive enough, outfitted in bespoke, and looked younger than Mary had expected. The Johnny in the picture looked younger, and delighted with the proceedings. 

“This is Bad Davey,” Johnny told them. “He’s always armed, and even when he’s not armed he’s a threat, and even when he’s not a threat he’s antagonistic. But he has a thing about women and children. And well…” he looked at Mary.

“And I’m a pregnant woman,” she finished his thought. How often did the boy do that? Leave out half-finished sentences to make someone else come to their own conclusions. What a clever trick. Had he been intelligence trained as well then?

“He’ll poke and prod to see what you’ll do, but he’s not really interested in doing you any harm. What he really wants is you gone. Back to your own world.”

“How are you going to manage that then?” Greg asked.

“Well, I have no idea, I never was too good at all that physics stuff. The greatest technological mind alive is on his way though. He can solve it, he can do, like, anything. Or make a computer do it for him. Still.” Johnny leaned his chin in one hand and tapped his finger in silent succession with the other. “I wanted to get a bit of a look at you too, to be honest. This whole thing is unsettling. And Davey will want to see you later. If you have the advantage he’ll know I helped you and he’ll go easier on you.”

“Are we in real danger then?” Greg leaned forward, slipping into DI Lestrade.

“That’s a complicated question. Just be patient and polite. It would take a lot to get him to risk going against me. He has too many people who rely on him to just tell you. He’s the head of the household now, he’s the one who keeps us safe. That was the deal. But he can show you, he can imply. So just pay attention.”

“Dr. Watson,” the dead eyed man said. “My shift is going to begin soon. I need to get you back home.”

Johnny turned to blink up at him again. “Oh, ta.” He reached across the table for his family scrapbook, drawing it back toward himself across the table until he held it against his chest. Looking between the two of them, he nodded. “That’s all I can do for now. The casebook is for Sherlock and Watson too. Um, someone will show up soon.”

“Thanks,” Mary told him. What else could she say?

“I,” Johnny bobbled his head a little. “I should go then. Sorry for interrupting your midnight snack.”

“It’s okay, this was worth delaying a couple biscuits.”

He stood, posture perfect. “High praise. I’ll leave you to it.”

When Mary moved to stand Johnny hurried to her shoulder to brace her at the elbow, helping her keep her balance. She looked down at his round face, considered him. It looked sweet and elastic and like a shell game. The real concern for her comfort was real, she recognized it from John’s face, but how much of the rest had been she didn’t know.

In return he seemed to read her quite as well, looking a mix of intrigued and cautious.

“Dr. Watson,” the man said again, voice curbed with respect.

“Yeah,” Johnny moved past them to the door, Mary and Greg following behind him. The young man stopped in the doorway to the kitchen, then started and moved out of their way.

There stood Older Sherlock leaning back against the kitchen island with his arms crossed across his chest.

“John,” Older Sherlock huffed out a laugh. Holmes, her mind immediately supplied. He looked like some sort of distinguished heart throb from some Gothic romance, his face kind, the weight of his authority like a cloak around him. “I do hope that you didn’t think I hadn’t deduce where you disappeared the moment you crawled out the window. At least you called someone who could keep you safe.”

The dead-eyed man nodded to Holmes and slipped out the back door after pressing a hand to Johnny’s shoulder.

“I was trying to be fair.” John’s shuffling in place was entirely unapologetic, if a little sheepish.

“Of course you were. You’re going to be the death of me some day.” The corner of his mouth ticked up and he nodded toward the door. “Were you cheating?”

“I didn’t break any rules, just gave some hints.”

Holmes’ smile grew tight. “You didn’t have to do this. You don’t have to be the one to protect everyone.”

Puffing up his chest, Johnny rocked up on the balls of his feet and then back onto his heels. “Someone’s got to be.”

Rubbing a hand over his eyes, Holmes sighed. 

“I know. Just. I had to be fair.”

Holmes looked at Mary and Greg and then back to Johnny. “Come on then, Doctor. If you’ve got to be noble, be noble at home. I hear there’s this thing called sleep, and that you should do it.”

“Ugh,” Johnny’s shoulders slumped. “I’m not a kid.”

Stepping forward, Holmes’ face went soft and open. His hand curled over the back of the young man’s head, to rest on the back of his neck. It looked natural, effortless, and made Johnny go slack. “But you are important. You’ve done everything you could, you don’t have to do this alone.”

Johnny moved to lean against him, his arms tight enough around the man to ruck up Holmes’ coat.

“I’m not going to leave you, John,” Holmes sighed, holding the young man close for a moment before they separated. “Let’s go home.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock learns some things and deduces some things - two sides of a single coin. After all, what is truth but something that must be paid for though he may not have enough change for the truth right in front of him. Beta Caroline comes to the rescue again and puns cannot be resisted.

Sherlock sighed and resisted the urge to pull the blanket up higher over John. Reason wouldn’t make the pathological need to protect any less, but common sense would. He’d lived long enough with the little veteran to know a single tug at the blanket would start John awake, narrow eyed and full of enough adrenaline that he wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon.

And the boy needed rest.

While the old disappearing act had filled Sherlock with equal measure of concern and exasperation, it also had Watson brother plotting written all over it.

The Watson brothers would always have things they kept secret among themselves. That was just the way it was. After everything, it was only right. Horrors needed to be put in boxes and left in the corners of the mind to rot away in their own time. 

There were secrets he and Mycroft had kept from their parents. That they still kept.

“He’s starting to get to an age where you have to let him make his own decisions. He needs to come into his own,” Watson said. His hands were tucked into his pockets, his center of gravity perfectly balanced.

“Like you did?” Sherlock asked him.

“Yes, you don’t understand how my mind worked - not really - but you understand I needed purpose. He’ll need purpose too.”

“Why don’t you tell me then? Why did you do what you did?” 

Watson looked down at his son. “I don’t know. The same reason you would have, I assume. Love. Someone told me it’s a much more vicious motivator.”

“That’s it?”

His smile was kind and sad, the gentle tuck of his mouth ticked up at the corners. “That’s all I can offer I’m afraid. I’m not real after all. One of the downsides of being a figment of your imagination is I can’t tell you anything you don’t know yourself.”

“Why do I keep you then? Should I have let you go?”

The hand on Sherlock’s shoulder was the memory of warmth. “I would have said no, I would have wanted you to hold on to something that reminded you you’re loved. That you can love and it’s going to be alright. If I hadn’t then I never would have entrusted you with my sons.”

“Wouldn’t you have?” Sherlock can feel his face go soft and entreating.

The answering laugh was extracted from that one case they had solved together. There was the worry that overuse would wear it thin, but it hadn’t lost its charming delight. In a world that turned boring in its predictability, Watson’s giggle held a brightness random and comforting all at once. “Don’t play coy; if you want me to compliment you, just say so. I liked you, I liked your brain. I was happy that day, with you, solving that case. You made me happy. That you could deduce if nothing else.”

“Ugh, why are you always teasing me?” Sherlock crossed his arms.

“Because the boys are always teasing each other and you suspect they got it from me. You could find out, you know. I won’t be upset, I’m dead after all.”

Sherlock stood very straight.

“Sherlock,” Watson paused, his eyes set, far too piercing. “It’s alright to be curious about the other Watson. That’s just human nature. You’re not failing me to want to know, to be curious about his wife, and about his relationship with the other Sherlock.”

“What if I just learn the way I finally let the other Watson down? The way I finally disappointed him?”

“John adores you, don’t let your self-doubt make you obtuse. We can talk about that later.” He pointed toward the stairs. “I may not be real, but that knocking is. That’ll be my brother.”

“Tim?”

“This is John’s territory, the closest of Bad Davey’s outposts is twenty minutes away. Yet Bad Davey’s lackey arrived at 221B almost as soon as you were. And without guns. And without Bad Davey.”

“Tim told him.”

Watson smiled. “Tim sees all. Answer the door, Sherlock.”

Gasping as he came out of his mind palace with a jerk, Sherlock took a couple tries to stagger out of his chair without waking John up. He was down the stairs two at a time; Mrs. Hudson would still be up anyway. If Tim was here, so would Irene and the insufferable Godfrey.

When he opened the door Tim (bespoke suit, ate gourmet on the plane if the sauce on his sleeve was anything to judge by, stroking his phone in his pocket) nodded to him, just about vibrating to get into 221B. Godfrey was absent, but Irene stood at Tim’s shoulder typing away on her mobile. “Tim,” he said, stepping out of the way.

“John?”

“Sleeping on the sofa. He tried to be noble last night.”

Rolling his eyes, Tim moved past him to see his nephew. “Ta for dragging him back home then.” Tim tread as silently as he ever did, something like a ghost.

“Sherlock, darling,” Irene said, finally looking up to give him one of those looks so slow and heavy it was a physical sensation. “I hope you don’t mind me saying goodbye as soon as I say hello. I’m a busy woman.”

“Presents for the Watsons again?” It was easy to lean against the doorjamb and pretend he wasn’t counting away seconds to give Tim enough time with his nephew. It wouldn’t do to race back up the stairs too quickly.

She smiled at him, ruffling her feathered lapels. Irene had always been a master of sleight of hand. “I have to be the favorite aunt.”

“We all have to be something I suppose.”

Laughing she leaned forward, her perfume mixed with the warmth of Godfrey’s aftershave. The scents blended perfectly because of course the Nortons used complimentary fragrances. “I have to say I haven’t missed living in your twee little place.”

“I missed you too.”

Her soft fingers held his chin in place so she could press a kiss to his cheek. “I have to tell you all about how ridiculous Americans are later - there’ll be a Watson reunion of course. Very Game of Thrones, I’m sure. I’ll regale you then.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You’ll love it,” she waved him off. “Wait until I tell you about my costar, he has these odd joker teeth and a penchant for talking too much about old murders. Surprisingly charming once you get over his hobbies.”

He couldn’t help smiling, even through his worry.

She seemed to recognize it, because of course she did and caught him by the hand. “Darling. You’ve been handling this, haven’t you? Whatever this is? What Auntie said didn’t make a great deal of sense, but you’re handling it, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

Pausing for a moment, she tilted her body into a perfect contrapposto. “There are people you can talk to, Sherlock, if you need to talk to someone.”

“When did we become so sentimental?” he sighed.

“Settling down will do that, won’t it? The Watson patriarch was clever, wasn’t he? Taking out all those threats with a single swing.”

“He didn’t do anything to Mycroft.”

“Mycroft lives in a box. He can’t get over himself. You, me, Godfrey, we’re the real threats. Just smart enough to get into trouble, too dumb to figure any way out again.” She patted his cheek. “You look like you just woke up.”

“Mind palace.”

She rolled her eyes at him. It charmed him enough he gave her a hug.

“Come now,” she said, palming his backside under his robe for old times’ sake. “Not too sentimental now. I have a husband to get to and you have some Watsons to wrangle.”

“What an American word.” He stepped back, let her resettle herself, readjust the tropical green of her feathers around herself again. The fashion had helped him on a couple barely a three cases and one that was almost a seven, but he could see how much maintenance it took.

“I’m going native. I’m also off. Hugs and kisses to the littlest Watson. Let him know I’ll be there to spoil him at the get together. He will be in awe of my present giving brilliance. I know what people want.” She winced a little at the connotation, but he let it go.

“I’ll be sure to tell him to react appropriately.”

She laughed, charmed enough by him to flip her cascade of red-blonde curls over her shoulder as she skipped down the steps. “See that you do.”

He missed the dark hair, they looked so much more alike with the dark hair. She’d have it back in a month or two anyway. Still. Closing the door, he took a deep breath before looking up the stairs.

Had he given them enough time?

Had he given them too much?

Tim had to have some idea about what had happened.

There was the feeling he got sometimes with Mycroft. Like he was watching some great shadow move behind a curtain. If the Watsons didn’t know something they wouldn’t be moving too quick. While the Watsons may not have a perfect idea of what was happening, they had to have a theory. Bad Davey had disappeared from London sans revenge, otherwise the horrific murder of Mycroft would be on every channel. Bad Davey did like to advertise his handiwork. Roost likewise had gone missing. John had once broken his second favorite mug, and the boy hadn’t left his brother’s side for days. Now Tim was in town and Irene talked about a Watson family reunion. The sort of event that could hold all the gravity of the meetings of heads of state.

He skipped the creaking stair because a little eavesdropping never hurt anyone.

From the doorway he watched Tim squeeze John to his side with the arm thrown over his shoulder. Looked at John’s hands: loose and unfisted, fingers apart, palms tilted upward. Looked at Tim’s face: pinched between the eyebrows, nostrils flared, corners of his mouth ticked down. Looked at the way their backs straightened and they turned toward Sherlock standing in the doorway.

“Irene was supposed to distract you longer,” Tim told him

“She does what she thinks is best,” Sherlock told him. The uncle. The man who could take John away if he wanted. It went against Watson’s wishes, but then Watson was dead. He knew he didn’t need to be jealous, didn’t need to be so temperamental. Every time he thought he turned a corner on this, there was another one in front of him. He was on the tenth corner, and it didn’t look like he’d run out of them anytime soon. The trick was just to keep Tim off his electronics, John’s electronics, everyone’s electronics.

“I want to tell him,” John said, looking at his palms.

Tell him what? Sherlock went up on the balls of his feet took an involuntary step into the flat.

Tim stood up quickly, gritted his jaw.

Something big then. Something huge. A real mystery. Watson then, or Grendel, or the brothers. Something John had a right to tell Tim even though Tim was his uncle. There was a laundry list of possibilities that Sherlock began to assemble but promptly pushed out of his mind, one should never have too many assumptions when approaching John. Still his heart beat fast in his chest, his breath sped. 

“We can trust him. Tim, please.”

“I’m not worried about him. You know what will happen when you talk about it. Especially after yesterday.”

“It’s important. We have to do something to fix things. They have to go back to their world, it’s not fair to keep them here just because talking about it might cause a little panic attack.”

John never had little panic attacks. Every panic attack was terrible and needed never to have happened. But also, John was about to share a mystery with him. Parenting was hard. 

And it wasn’t his decision to make one way or the other.

John did need to come into his own.

Also he needed to tell Sherlock what was so important, such a risk, so clever, it might put the Watsons at risk.

The Watson-Dimmock men shared a heavy look that lasted too long.

“Fine. Fine. It’s all fine anyway, isn’t it?” Tim walked over to the window, shoulders tense. Pulling out his phone he started poking around his apps. There was nothing else new to be learned from him.

“Thanks,” John’s smile was soft. Too soft. A distraction. His laugh was real though, an inside joke.

“Sherlock,” Tim asked. “Can I borrow your laptop?”

“Sure,” he said and then caught himself. “Absolutely not.”

“You can use mine,” John offered.

Whatever kept Tim out of the conversation.

Without sparing the man any more attention, Sherlock moved to go sit down on the coffee table. Before Watson he would have just said the first thing that came to his mind to see what John’s reaction would be. He trusted John to try to be open now. 

He also knew how hard it was for John to open up.

“It occurred to me that if all Grendel wanted to do was make more of his little soldiers after your father destroyed his labs and he went on the run, then he wouldn’t have needed all that power.”

John looked up at him.

“In all the newspaper articles about mysterious explosions, there were factories and old power plants. He wouldn’t have needed all those factories for more children. There had to have been something more. Something industrial he was trying to make.”

Tim made a furious, exasperated sound; John just offered him a small, proud smile.

“I knew you looked into his European adventures. You’re too clever to miss the clues, and you were too interested in my father.”

“It was hard to miss once I knew what to look for.” He felt it was important to let John tell him. If he tried to ask questions John would just get mulish again, he curled his hands against the side of his thighs to try and hide his curiosity. If it came to it he could always push later. It took a careful hand to interrogate someone who knew what he was feeling with a look, who knew him so well. If Sherlock wasn’t careful John would have him paying attention to entirely the wrong thing.

“The project my family was a part of, that was Grendel’s main area of focus. He was trying to create a prototype of this thing –” John looked down at his hands, they were trembling, his breath rattled in his lungs. “I. It.”

“Prototype? He was making a new one of… whatever it was?”

“The old one didn’t always work the way it was supposed to work.”

“How was it supposed to work?” Sherlock leaned in, weightless with morbid fascination.

John winced. “I’m sorry, this is hard to talk about it. It’s complicated and dangerous, The Thing I mean. It has an entirely binary effect. Either you hate it and want to kill it, or you love it and it makes you want to use it. There doesn’t seem to be anything in between.“

“Fine,” Sherlock shrugged, “I’ll hate it.”

“Will you? You lo… you thought Moriarty was your friend at first. Even after that old lady, even after those kids.”

“That was years ago. I discovered Moriarty’s nature years ago. Can we put it to rest?” he snapped.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant- It’s powerful.”

"You keep referring to it as though it’s almost alive. As though it has intent.”

“Well it’s not, at least I don’t think so.” John listed to the side, head waggling. “It could be.”

“You’re talking in circles." Sherlock was so close! Whatever it was, it had to be big, big enough for Watson to die for. Big enough to give up his life to keep secret.

A Mystery. 

An eleven at least.

“I’m just trying to find the right way of explaining the right way without sounding mad. It wouldn’t make sense if I said it outright.”

Sherlock snapped, seizing him by the shoulders. "Just, how does it work!" 

John started. Then looked sad. Then looked down. His jaw set and clenched in the way he had when he came to a decision.

"I’m sorry,” Sherlock told him.

"Only because if you think I’m mad at you I won’t tell you.”

Sherlock let out a huff of annoyance, but couldn’t make himself argue.

“It’s okay, Sherlock. I know you. I know you can’t resist a mystery. I’m not mad. Davey’s head of family without anyone dad enough to put him in his place, but I’ve given up too much to keep them safe." When he looked up again he looked just like his father. “You need to let me speak at my own pace.”

That made Sherlock shake himself all over. What had he been thinking? He was supposed to take care of the boy. Supposed to take care of him in Watson’s absence. He looked at John and his stomach dropped.

John sat trembling in place, his teeth rattling quietly in his mouth. The boy looked like he was trying to make himself small. “Do you know why it takes children so much time to start talking?”

Sherlock blinked, but accepted the diversion, leaned forward to set one hand on John’s shoulder.

“It’s not just muscle tone, muscle control – ability to speak, it’s also the brain. It doesn’t matter how smart someone is. The brain needs time to develop, sort, store, learn. It’s impossible.” His swallow clunked in his throat, his teeth chattered softly in his head. “It’s impossible for an eight-year -old, a six-year-old, a toddler to be a surgeon. Physically the mind hasn’t developed enough to sort and filter.” John spoke faster and faster as if he had to get the words out before he fell apart.

“When you were eight, you didn’t have an eight-year-old brain,” Sherlock said, held John together while he tried not to shake. That was what he was there for. To hold the boy to a sense of safety.

“No,” John finally looked at him. “No I didn’t.”

“Mycroft and I have known since we saw the scan of your brain that Grendel did something to you. Genetically you’re peculiar, but nothing… Nothing that would explain the advanced development in a way that made sense. It had to be at least partially something mechanical to speed up your natural genius. We’ve known that for years, it was just a matter of putting together the evidence.”

“I know,” John’s hand closed tight around Sherlock’s wrist. “After I fell off that truck and you made me go to hospital even though I was perfectly fine.”

Sherlock and Tim both snorted in tandem.

“Ahem,” John frowned at them. “After that time you wasted everyone’s time making me go to hospital, Mycroft showed you my brain scans. But he knew it before then, didn’t he? Told you. But you hadn’t seen what he meant it person.”

“No, I hadn’t seen it for myself before,” Sherlock agreed.

That got him a genuine smile. “It’s so nice living with you sometimes, you put the pieces together all on your own. I’ve never had to try and explain. You never brought it up. You never made me talk about it.”

Of course he wouldn’t make John talk about it, he still remembered the nightmares John used to scream his way through. “It was obviously part of some unpleasant memories. I imagine whatever the process was, it wasn’t enjoyable. If you were ready to talk about it with me, you would. Are you?”

John pressed his lips together. “No, I. I don’t think I’ll be ever ready to talk about it. It. Was.”

“Tim knows,” Sherlock sniped.

“He was my uncle, he had to know because of. Because of how we met.”

“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to. I know it. Your father was so kind, so good, but he hated Grendel more than I thought someone could hate someone else.”

“How do you know?” John blinked up at him.

“He made Grendel kill himself while he watched.”

“Oh.” John looked down to where his thumb still rested over Sherlock’s pulse. “I guess you’re right.”

“I never would have thought Watson had it in him. He was too good,” Sherlock said, totally on autopilot. He got that way sometimes in the middle of a deduction. “He hated Grendel because he loved you and your brothers. Love is a much more vicious motivator. It was more than just the children Grendel murdered, more than just the affront to God and nature. More than how Grendel hurt you. People are hurt everyday and the three of you were in the process of bouncing back.”

John stared at him and the typing behind him had stopped.

“He didn’t know I was coming. He wanted to watch Grendel die as one of his last acts on earth. He wanted to feel it. It was personal. But how was it personal? It was more than just stealing his DNA, stealing his chance to watch you grow up. Grendel had deeply offended his spirit. Offended his soul in a way he found abhorrent. It wasn’t just that you were tortured, you were tortured in a way that only he and you would understand. Oh.”

John straightened in that way he did without realizing it. Mimicking Sherlock when he’d had an epiphany.

“As the doctor, you didn’t just have to experience it, you had to observe it. You had to watch. This is more than just what he did to you. This is about what he did to your brothers. This is why David and Roost are far more protective of you even though they’re both far more damaged. The prototype. The reason the first two generations had difficulties wasn’t just because of the genetic alterations. It was because of the machine. It didn’t always work.” 

The sound John made was purely reactive, his eyes tiny pinpricks of panic, of the horror of memory. Sherlock froze up, tensed tight into a knot. It felt like something had dug its hand into Sherlock’s abdomen and ripped his insides out, had hollowed him from belly to chin. He could feel the revulsion lodged like a meat hook in his soft palette keeping him quiet while John kept making these little coughing anguished sounds. He sounded like an animal. Sherlock reached out with both hands, but John shrugged him off, wouldn’t let Sherlock pull him close the way he used to.

The boy grit his teeth still, forced his back straight. “I’m fine.” His hand squeezed tight around Sherlock’s wrist. “I’m in control of myself. I’m not a child.”

His eyes closed. 

There was the rustle of Tim’s suit.

“Shut up, Tim,” John snapped, eyes squeezed closed. “Not everything is a straight line.”

“Look at me,” Tim answered.

John opened his eyes, tilted to look past Sherlock’s shoulder. It was fascinating to watch the transformation, the way John calmed, focused, his face was like a spear driven into the heart of the matter. “Right. That’s much better.”

“Is it?” Sherlock asked.

When John looked at him he looked about thirty years older, but none the worst for it. He had a bit of his father’s authority. “I just thought I was over it. Thought everything would be normal. It’s not really alive, I don’t think. It’s just a machine. But I had thought we’d killed it. This proves we failed, that it’s still a threat.”

“Just. Don’t think about that, John. Don’t think about it. Think about a solution.”

John nodded once, twice. Breathed. Was still shaking a little, but more like an annoyed dog then someone about to fall apart. “We can’t let anyone use it again. You can’t tell. Please. Please. No one can know about it, as soon as they do they’ll think it won’t affect them, that they can try to fix it, try to make it work. It doesn’t just affect the person its pointed at, it has a sort of radiation to it.”

“No one’s going to use it. I won’t let them,” Sherlock promised. “Your father killed him, John. He gave his life to keep your family safe. I won’t let that mean nothing.”

Tim was still typing away because of course that was what he was doing instead of helping. Well, he helped a little.

John stood up to wrap his arms around Sherlock, hugged him tight. “Thank you, Sherlock. Just, thank you. I wish I could tell you everything, I wish I could say the words.”

“It’s okay if it’s too painful,” he soothed.

“It’s not just that,” John clung tighter to him. “But it’s not just my secret. And it’s so dangerous. It’s just better this way. Letting you figure it out yourself.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to a tummy bug and emergency life situations the chapter was late, so I'm adding a bonus chapter just because I can. Caroline betas, Godfrey woos, and Irene says a sex thing, of course it’s a sex thing. I don't like to get too sexual in my writing, but Godfrey and Irene are Godfrey and Irene. It's mostly wordplay, no actual sex happens on screen.

“Ugh,” Godfrey said. “I never liked Hamish.”

Irene blew the steam off her coffee as she tilted her head toward him.

Auntie had been behind that vault door for two hours now, almost two and a half. He had no idea what the man was doing, but the whole thing made him antsy. He hated being antsy. This was not how he pictured spending his first day in London with his lady and his bestie. He thought they’d wander around with the adorable nephews and maybe do something twee and gimmicky, like go to that one monster shop on Hoxton Street or go to a tea shop or something. The littlest Watson loved tea. And yet here he was left waiting against a wall.

Since she didn’t feel the need to comment, he specified. “I know Auntie has this whole big brother thing going on, where Hamish is perfect forever because he was his brother or whatever, but all he did was have him go on these dangerous missions and demand attention.”

Irene didn’t point out Hamish was the one who died, who jumped, while Tim lived still to eat waffles with them on Sunday mornings. Who was he kidding? Sunday afternoons. Only nuns and cowboys got up before noon on Sunday.

“What’s he even doing in there?”

“I don’t know. Something sciencey?” 

He hated it when Irene played dumb. “Something dangerous, if it wasn’t he’d have us in there helping.”

“Family business is family business, beloved. It takes as long as it takes.”

“Family business. Hmp. Hamish was far too entitled with Auntie,” Godfrey said as an answer to the question he had never been asked.

“Tim is a big boy,” she smiled against the lid of her coffee cup. Her arm folded easily over the plane of his shoulder. “He can make his own decisions.”

“He took advantage of Auntie’s good nature.”

Irene looked sideways at him, her eyes bright under the fashionable red of her eyeliner, her smile subtle in soft rose gold. When had he started investing so much brain space in memorizing makeup colors? “So he acts like you?”

“No!” he snapped, resentment so heavy in his chest it made it hard to breathe.

She sipped her expensive coffee with the six-page long name while he fumed.

What a thing to say! He never took advantage of Auntie. Auntie did what he said because Godfrey was always right and Tim dressed like a hobo. Or a teddy bear, one of those sad one’s that lived in thrift shops with big dark eyes, and round soft faces, and set little mouths.

“What do you care?” he snapped back at her since she wouldn’t do the decent thing and start a fight herself. “You just like him because I like him.”

“Every couple needs a hobby?”

He snorted, unamused.

She looked even less amused by his response to her peacemaking. “That’s not the way you talk to me,” she told him. “You don’t have to apologize right now, but you need to woo me.”

She was his wife.

Irene always wanted him to be reasonable when he wasn’t done being mad about dumb stuff. “You have to woo me, too. I didn’t want to hear that stuff.”

Smiling like a professional, Irene curled a hand around the muscle of his shoulder. “You’re so extra.”

“Hmp, no one’s said extra for years. You sound like an old lady.”

“That what happens when you give your years to someone.” She stood in front of him, lips curling upward at the slow capitulation that was a matter of muscle memory. Her eyes were open in the honest guile of seduction.

“Is it?” he asked.

“Wooing you is one of my favorite things to do.” And wasn’t it just? A predator knows a predator.

He placed a hand on her waist and other in her free hand. He tangoed her back, their foreheads almost touching, their bodies close enough to feel each other’s heat. Dipping her back over his arm, he leaned over her. “I have a friend who is a trout, he became an accountant.” They waltzed around the waiting room, one two three, one two three, pose. Her perfect face tilted at the perfect angle, her laughter half hidden behind her lips, her hand strong where it was braced at the back of his neck. 

In that moment Godfrey wanted to give her nothing but honor and glory.

In every moment he wanted to give her nothing but honor and glory. Wanted just to give her delight all the days of her life. What was love? What was their life?

“He worked in a river bank, on the scales,” he told her. “The bank began to flounder, or so he went to go work for a loan shark. The pay wasn’t great, but he got plenty of pearls of wisdom.”

She laughed so hard he had a hard time holding her upright. Who was Godfrey kidding, he was très buff, he was fine, he could probably lift a bus.

Well, maybe not the line about the bus.

The door slid open and there stood Auntie.

The man’s skin was so pale it was tinged yellow. He had sweat so much his hair was soaked black, his shirt was soaked grey, his face dripped. Godfrey got Irene up on her feet in time to rush over to Tim.

His eyes rolled up in head, his knees gave out just in time for Godfrey to catch him. Tim didn’t grumble, didn’t make a sound, just collapsed into Godfrey’s arms.

He tucked his arms around Auntie, the man’s short, but dense, like a grumpy little brick. He’s almost panicking because, whoop there went Auntie’s eyes up in his head and whoop down Auntie went. Auntie was like a rock, what could have shaken him like this?

“Hey, hey, buddy you okay?”

Letting out a shivery little laugh, Tim only shook his head. Irene slid down on the other side of him, her hands hovering above him.

“The Thing,” Auntie said, his hand reaching out to hold onto Godfrey. “The Thing that ruined our lives. I had to touch it, I had to deal with it.”

Godfrey’s brain kind of went ??? then !!! then !?!. He felt like one of those texts Auntie sent him when his brain was more machine than man. “You’ll be okay,” he said, because what else was there to say? “We’re here with you, we’re not leaving you.”

Auntie laughed. “Everyone leaves. Everyone passes away. Not even a name left for anyone else to remember.”

Employing care, Godfrey gave him gentle slaps to the cheek. “Hey, you’re wandering into no sense zone. Come back to the station, friend.”

“I may have gained a nephew, but I lost a brother to the thing. I love John, but I wanted a brother. I wanted a grown up. That thing killed by family, it ruined my life. We thought we’d destroyed it, but it–” 

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Godfrey said, because he was a survivor, not a fool. “Hamish was stupid stubborn. If this thing could make him go wonky I don’t want to know any of its intimate secrets.”

“You’re not curious?” Tim rasped. The man looked so yellow pale, he looked like a corpse. All wane and condensing moisture, Godfrey squeezed him tighter.

“Look, I don’t suffer from white people problems. I’m not more curious about anything than I care about Irene’s and your safety. If this thing is messing with stuff, sure, let’s stop it. I just don’t really want anything to do with it more than that. Tell me just what I need to know to help you and I’ll help.”

“It’s just that simple?”

“I’d say I’m a simple man, but that’s a lie. I’m a complex masterwork of elegance and art. I’m the baroque of people. Bernini is all about me. I’m the Saint Teresa of hot men. I’m touched by that angel.”

Tim let out a croaky little laugh, and so Godfrey squeezed him even harder. Tim squeaked and so Godfrey gave him a little air again.

Irene leaned in, pressed a kiss to Tim’s sweaty forehead. Didn’t even flinch. What a woman. “How can we help you feel safe?”

“I…” he looked up at them with his big brown eyes. What a little snuggle bear.

“You don’t need to be in control right now,” she told him, squeezed his hands together at his chest with both of hers. “Just trust us, and hand that control over, just for a little bit.”

Tim grumbled, but didn’t fight.

“Come along, Auntie,” she said. “Communication is the cornerstone of every healthy relationship.”

Tim sighed, closed his eyes, rested his head against Godfrey’s chest. “There’s not much you need to do. While Sherlock was distracted I altered John’s laptop to be the center of a network to interfere with international scientific and governmental observation and security systems. Just satellites and things like that. I put together a subroutine to mimic solar flares, lightening, tea time power drains, the basics. As long as no one reboots any systems or tries to go over the data themselves it should be fine. No one will be able to pick up the energy fluctuations that are part of the diagnostics.”

Godfrey made a wide-eyed gesture at Tim to commiserate with Irene. Did Auntie hear the words coming out of his face? He just sat down and made himself a subroutine to fake out NASA. Toodle, toodle do, let’s just get it done! 

Irene couldn’t gesture because of the whole dom throwback thing, but she widened her eyes and nodded too. He loved Irene. Irene was the best Irene.

“Yeah, sure,” Godfrey said. “So that’s taken care of. What’s next?”

“Everyone’s responsible for a piece of the device, we divided it up equally. Mostly equally. I took the worst piece, but didn’t tell them. Davey suspected but he has bigger things to worry about. Each of us will run a diagnostic, try to find out if that piece is the problem, if it is will use it to send the others back.”

And Tim will have to lose his brother all over again.

He and Irene shared a look. She knew what was up just as much as he did.

“But you’ve checked your part, right? You’ve checked it and you’re fine? It’s dead or whatever?”

Tim nodded against his chest, tried to hide his face. “Yeah. It’s dead now. A bit of an energy burst, like trapped gas in a corpse, then. Nothing. It didn’t cause this.”

“Good, that’ll relieve some of your stress at least.”

“You’re not going to tell me I did something stupid.”

Godfrey looked down at him, huffed. “Look, I slayed my dragon with books, massive law tomes heavy enough to crush a man, killed my demons with pirate adventures and smuggling snack cakes into Iraq. You have to do what you have to do. You’re a grown up. And one of the most practical people I know. You wouldn’t risk a little bit of death if it didn’t mean something.”

“I hear dying a little death is good for you every once in a while,” Irene grinned.

“That’s is a sex thing, isn’t it?” Tim groaned. “Of course it is, when isn’t it a sex thing?”

“You mean la petite mort?” Godfrey grinned.

“I never want to hear that again.”

“Micro necro?”

Tim took Godfrey’s face in his gross sweaty hands. “You are sinning, you are a sin.”

“Sin together, win together.”

Irene did that thing where she underestimated the force of her laugh. Her laugh was too great, and she made a sound like a massage chair and then a sound like a donkey that had been surprised. The burst of happiness Godfrey felt made him feel like he was actually floating.

“Come on then,” Godfrey said and picked him right up into his arms.

“Not a child,” Tim muttered half-heartedly.

“Course not, Auntie. But if we show up to the family gathering with you looking like this, baby Watson is going to murder all three of us dead. Well, all two of us. Irene is perfection and free from the error of the world. Her only fault is never washing any dishes ever.”

“That’s what the maids are for. And the dogs.”

“I knew you were feeding the dogs your scraps!”

“I’m supporting our personal ecosystem, I practically a conservationist,” she sniffed.

“You’re teaching them to be babies, big begging babies. You know Tim is weak to their giant dopey faces! He can’t resist them!” Tim could resist anyone, he was more stubborn than Hamish. And even better at looking disapproving. It was maddening. Tim had calculated the dog’s exact optimal treat per day ratio and never faltered. He was such– such– he was such a maiden aunt!

“Come on, Auntie,” Irene said. “Let’s get you to the safe house so you can be cleaned up in time for the boys to arrive.”

“I–” Tim said and they both looked at him. “Thanks. For being my friend.”

“Aw, Auntie,” Irene said and squeezed his hands.

“I know I,” he pressed his lips together so he looked constipated. “I know I can be difficult.”

With great effort Godfrey held down his sarcasm.

“You both have important lives. That mean something, something really important. It means a lot that you took a break to come help me.”

“If we didn’t you’d just lie on the floor in a puddle of your own misery,” Irene told him.

“Are you dying?” Godfrey said in alarm. He kind of sounded like it, he had that asthmatic butterfly thing going on his breath still.

Tim made his little pug face. “I’m perfectly fine, you can put me down now.” Then he weakly kicked his legs like a little paddle duck. Just these little lower case kicks; paddle, paddle, paddle. It was adorable and not terrifying at all.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re a venerable juggernaut. We need to go set up so Irene can present all the presents she’s be buying to make your family fall even more in love with her. Will get you chocolate! It’ll increase your serotonin.”

“That’s fake, it’s not a real thing,” Tim muttered, eyes at half-mast. “It’s like tin passed as silver.”

“Delicious, delicious tin,” Godfrey said.

“Sero-tin-ne?” Irene said, but Tim had already fallen asleep.

Godfrey sighed. Irene was too flawless for this world.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hilton considers wheelchair locks and friendship, Davey considers murder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caroline betas again. Enjoy the bonus chapter.

Hilton was trying to help Porky Johnson (what a name, the poor child, but then his own name was Hilton Cubbit, so) weed the herbs. The boy was good natured after a fashion, the sort of boy-man who would have not been out of place in London a century ago. He was seventeen and built like a cow shed, not one for decorum, and struggling to identify the difference between cilantro and weeds.

The boy thought slow and hit fast, most recently in defense of Kitty Patel who had her tomatoes trampled. There had to be a way talk to the boy about the bludgeoning he’d delivered, but Hilton had no idea how to even start the conversation. (Being an adult was hard, he hardly had his own life in order, never mind trying to advise sad children on how to make good choices.)

“Don’t know,” Porky was saying. “Don’t think Kitty and me would be good friends. Not much to me, is there. Bit boring is all.”

“You can do boring,” Hilton tried. He caught someone in his periphery in the way only someone in the midst of an awkward conversation could. “Oh,” he said. “It looks like we have a visitor.”

The sound of Porky’s swallow sloshed around in his throat. “I’ll be off then,” he said too fast, his face gone a bit too tight, but before Hilton could say something he’d fled.

A pair of sleek brown shoes came into view, neatly pressed slacks, pale fidgeting hands tight around a bunch of flowers. He’d know that way of actually looking like an adult anywhere. (It was the crime of the century, the man always looked like he’d stepped out of costuming for some big budget film with a great soundtrack.) Davey looked down at him and then away, sun flashing off the man’s clunky dark rimmed glasses.

“Davey.” Hilton smiled as he eased his way up and back onto his wheel chair. (He still had a hard time just climbing into his chair from the ground and trusting he remembered to use the wheelchair lock.) He’d got mud on it again, but that was what the wash was for he supposed. Wouldn’t be the first time. Since Porky had wandered off he might as well bring Davey to the gazebo. He could use a break anyway.

“Sorry,” Davey said, voice soft and even. His pale hands twitched, holding the bunch of flowers he’d brought closer to his chest. The lower half of his face hidden behind branches and blossoms. “Didn’t mean to scare him off.”

“It’s fine.” Hilton curved forward and down between the rows, crossing over his wheel tracks from before. Davey fell into pace with him with a smooth pivot, just far enough away Hilton’s elbow didn’t catch the man in the leg when he pushed his wheels. “I think he was trying to avoid the conversation anyway. Those are interesting.” He nodded at the conglomeration of flowers. Davey’s pale hands shifted on the canvas and plastic so they rustled like the boughs of trees. Like autumn.

Davey shuffled next to him. “I thought something agricultural would be thematic. I think the white one’s lemon blossom, there’s apple in there somewhere too. I don’t know. Flowerkats, things. A mojo flower and a day dayli.”

Hilton laughed, Davey smiled, shrugged. The lines on the back of his suit so well cut the motion looked liquid, hot butter on toast smooth. Who was Davey’s tailor? Maybe Hilton should ask. Elsie always looked like herself, which was to say a goddess, and the girls followed suit. Hilton just followed her around trying not to look too big for the room he was in.

But he needed to focus on Davey right now (his mother always called it woolgathering), Davey who’d driven out to meet him from London. How long did that drive even take?

“They’re nice, Elsie will love them.”

Davey shrugged again, “They’re just some kind of flowers. I just told the florist what I wanted.”

“Don’t be too modest, you were thoughtful.” Hilton came to a hard stop, the earth soft under his wheels. “David.”

Momentum pulled Davey a few steps ahead of him. Arms hanging at his side, Davey stood still. The flowers looked fresh and dewy, purple, white, and yellow. Had he seen Davey’s face today?

“Davey.” He bit at his tongue, held it still for a moment between his teeth. “Davey, can you look at me, please?”

David was such a heartbreakingly gentle man, so kind, it made Hilton want to wrap him in cotton wool sometimes. The man didn’t resist his request, of course he didn’t.

It hurt a bit to think of the kind man wandering around the world Hilton had had to learn could be awful unkind sometimes. Now he had a good look at the man, Davey looked hungry, harried, the dark circles under his eyes looked applied with thumbs full of stage paint.

“What’s brought you to our door? You’re welcome always and for whatever reason. Just.” He hated this, he felt all giant limbs and hands and mouth. At least when he could walk he could stand eye to eye with the man, give him a hug.

Davey tucked his chin down, lips thin and tucked in the way Johnny’s did. Like his father had. It was a learned behavior, something that Davey had absorbed through exposure. An expression he thought through between arranging his face.

What was he supposed to say? He should say something kind and good, like Davey was, so the man would know how much of a friend the man had been to Hilton. How gentle and loving. Something so the man would know how much Hilton cherished their friendship and wanted him to be happy.

“I miss my dad,” Davey said first.

It felt like the first step in some sort of dance.

Hilton breathed out. His hands gripped the wheels of his chair, he felt the handrim press against the bones of his hand. He’d become very aware of his bones since he’d been shot.

“I was there when my dad died, I saw him jump. I saw his body. This shape that fell too fast. Just this falling stone and too much blood.” David swayed, his center of gravity drifting between the balls of his feet and his heels. Hilton stared at the center of his chest, watched his breathing. “I was there.”

“Oh, Davey,” Hilton breathed out, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He let out a little distressed hiccup, refocused on Davey. He needed to move beyond his own horror, he needed to listen. To be here in the conversation. It wasn’t about him, it was about his friend.

“I’m in charge now. In charge of being kind, in charge of being enough.”

Hilton finally looked at his friend’s face, how blank it was, like a doll’s. Not like a doll’s, like the pearl handle of a straight razor. He reached out a large hand, hard and deft from all the PT.

David gripped his hand like a life line, skin pale against his. Like the flesh of some nocturnal thing. Like the appearance of a ghost. He didn’t like his friend to look so transparent. Maybe Hilton should take him further up into Cheshire. Cheshire where everything was lovely and green and less like a ghost. That’s what he wanted, an opaque Cheshire. Elsie had been hinting about a holiday anyway. They could go to the shore. Take their time looking from sea to sky, eat so much terrible food they died in a marmite mausoleum.

But that was just running away, Hilton looked at their hands, looked at Davey’s pale face. You couldn’t run away from things like this, they were always faster. Hilton had had to learn that too. “What happened to make you so angry then?”

Hilton tried to be calm, not scared. To be what he needed to be.

“Mycroft gave my brother a panic attack, an existential crisis. He hurt my brother to prove a point, and I was told not to interfere.”

Humming, Hilton gripped Davey’s hand tight.

“I want to kill him. I want to take my time, I want to cut him to pieces.”

That made something in the sorrowful dove of Hilton’s heart startle and want to fly away. He jerked, his hand tightening around Davey’s. For a moment he didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand. Davey’s hand tightened around his, his eyes tinged with desperation. Hilton couldn’t help himself. Before Elsie had recovered and after the nurse had gone home for the day, it had been Davey who carried Hilton to his chair, who helped him with a lot of things that– that paralysis meant he needed help with.

Having choked that out, Davey turned his head, pressed his free hand to his mouth. Seemed to put a padlock on himself.

Davey had helped Hilton because the man was good and he cared about Hilton. It was just expected that Hilton would take care of himself, Davey expected that because he cared about him. So Hilton had. Davey talked about PT and medication and gardening again like they were _whens_. Like _if_ didn’t exist. Davey had believed and so Hilton had done it. That was the type of friend Hilton had, that was the type of friend Hilton should strive to be. A man worthy of that belief.

He held onto Davey’s hand even tighter.

“Please, please Hilton. You’re a good man. You’re a real good man. Tell me something. Tell me anything to make me not break my exile. To make me not break the Watson-Holmes treaty.”

How was he supposed to do that? How was he supposed to do anything like that?

“I’m trying to be good too. Hilton, please. Please. I don’t want to disappoint you.” His eyes flashed behind his glasses, his hand trembled in Hilton’s.

“Why must you kill him?” Hilton asked, the words like poison in his mouth, like venom to be spat out. His words sounded distant, stilted. Strange, who talked like that?

“So he can’t hurt Baby Brother ever again. So no one will hurt us.”

“Hurt him like it would hurt Johnny to have a brother who took the choice away from him? More than it would hurt Johnny to have someone he loved treat him like someone too weak to stand up for himself. Even more than it would hurt him to have a murderer for a brother?” Hilton sat up straighter, pressing himself up higher with his elbows and upper back. He felt terrible, he felt like a holy horror. Separate and unmerciful. He shook, scared of Davey and of the way sweet Davey had told him the truth when he said he wanted to kill Mycroft Holmes.

Davey sort of crumpled down to his knees.

He curled forward until he could hide his face in the space between Hilton’s leg and the side of his chair, back hunched like an animal.

He held onto Hilton with a trembling hand.

“David,” Hilton said, deep breathing through the alarm. “Tell me what to do.”

The sounds David made were not the sounds Hilton had ever heard a human being make. They were sounds scored by teeth, framed by savagery, sharpened and shining like the flash of something’s eyes in the night. Hilton bowed his body over David’s, trying to protect him. His pressed the breadth of his palm over the bare space of his neck, held his face close.

“David, David. You must be good. You can hide here with me as long as you need to, but you must be good and not try to hurt Mycroft.”

David trembled. His body melted like Byrony, Hilton’s sweet baby girl did, going soft and all dead weight. Hilton combed his fingers through his hair, waited. Byrony seemed to like it anyway. He looked at the way David was trying to disconnect from everything. “Here, Davey. Hand me the flowers, I’ll put them to the side.” This was so far out of his realm of anything he was comfortable with he had to hold onto anything he could. Manners and politeness in the face of some sort of breakdown. And doing the whole moral debate with flowers in play while they sat seemed like a bad idea. “They’re lovely, I want to keep them safe.”

He looked around himself for anything, he couldn’t just set it down on the ground. There was one of his giant just washed off boots set to the side to dry that would work. Elsie always insisted on a heavy boot so he wouldn’t have his feet banged without realizing it.

“I, um.” He laughed, the sound strained and thin, dropping the flowers in the boot. “That should be a new thing. Boots and blossoms, has a ring to it.” Now Davey’s hands were free they pulled back from Hilton, tucking into his lap.

They say like that for ages, Davey sitting on the ground with his face against Hilton’s leg and Hilton trying not to have an emotional breakdown.

He always told the children to put themselves in the other person’s shoes and so Hilton tried his best to do that. Tried to think about seeing his father die, and then suddenly finding himself head of household, of having little brothers to take care of that were as stubborn and determined as Johnny and Roost. He genuinely tried to think around the fact Davey had seen his father die. Leaning forward, Hilton curled over Davey, trying to protect him from what had already happened. Davey was so brave, and so good, and so sad. It broke his heart to think of the man unhappy, to think of him hurting. There he was thinking about himself again, he needed to be wise for Davey. Try to be wise. No one had ever accused him of it before.

“Let it go Davey, please just let it go. Mycroft may have done something wrong to prove a point, but you’re better than him, better than that. You don’t have to do something wrong to prove a point back.”

“You’re crying,” Davey said, looking up at him.

“Of course I’m crying,” Hilton sniffed. “You’re unhappy. I want to help you, but I can’t. I want you to be happy. A series of terrible things happened and you feel like you have to bear the brunt of… of… of the whole world all over again. You’re my very best mate, Davey. You’ve always been there to support me and help me be a better person. I just wish I was better at this sort of thing.”

“You’re… you’re okay,” Davey sighed out, looking up at Hilton with a strange sort of fascination. “There, there. Don’t cry.”

“I’ll cry if I want to!” Hilton grumped back. “Promise me you won’t do anything that might get you in trouble. I want you to be safe. Besides if you murder Mycroft you’ll have to call me to help you hide the body and I’m terrible with corpses. I’d faint right out of my chair. They’d find my wheel tracks and I’d be implicated, you’d have to be my cell mate and my awful snoring would keep you up.”

“You snore? But Elsie’s such a light sleeper, isn’t she? I thought that was why she never slept after the twins were born, they’d roll over and she’d wake up.”

“Oh, I’d never snore next to Elsie.”

Davey laughed. He wished the sound was a little less wet and a little happier. The man had reason to be upset though, Hilton couldn’t try to take that from him.

“Do you want to stay the night? Elsie and the twins should be back in two or three hours.”

“No. I’d love to. There’s going to have to be an accounting in my family, and I have to be there.”

“Okay,” Hilton said. “How can I help you now other than reminding you not to murder someone?”

“Remember that old folly I had fixed up for you about six years ago for your birthday? The one your however great grandfather built?”

“Uh, yeah. The old tower. The foundation was faulty and it was about to fall down.”

“Yeah,” Davey said and ducked his head. “I’m going to have to blow part of it up.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betaed by Caroline who pulled through despite term papers. Many thanks to the saint Caroline! Important questions are asked, important questions are avoided, and Coolio is quoted.

Irene stood at the top of the stairs looking down at Sherlock stopping himself from fussing with Johnny as the young man took off his coat. Johnny turned and once he saw the look on Sherlock’s face he sighed. Having been caught, Sherlock relaxed into the expression, rumbled out a laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair so it stood up in little blond puffs. 

The boys were growing up.

She was growing older with them and she… she was fine with that. She felt strong, too strong to have to fight her way to what she wanted. Strong enough to just have it now. The sort of confidence to have anyone she wanted and now she didn’t want anyone at all.

That sort of power did more than intoxicate.

She was a palace, a fortress, a goddess. She had every advantage. She’s already won every negotiation. Captain Moonpaws pressed his giant shoulder against her hip, looking up at her with the sort of big-eyed gaze only Great Danes could manage. Irene rubbed his ears for his trouble. Godfrey’s dogs had their own little cozy spot upstairs and they’d probably stay up here most of the night. Captain had been named as a puppy by Roost – half because he was sweet and half because he was a secret troll who loved the idea of making people say silly things. 

Roost stumbled in the door toward Johnny first to kiss the flax fluff of his younger brother’s hair. “Johnny. You’re still okay.”

“He bounces back quickly,” Sherlock said, not observing for once. Always partially observing when it came to Johnny. He looked and looked but never seemed to be able to organize the evidence in a way that made sense.

He always wanted everything to be clever.

Roost grinned, hugged Sherlock, to pick his pocket if the reports could be believed. She was pretty good at spotting that sort of thing as par for course, but Roost and Sherlock were a different level of slick when it came to that sort of thing. Sherlock’s laughter was the only indication Roost had taken something. Good naturedly Sherlock held out a hand for his nicked phone and corrected the young man’s technique. 

“It’s been so long!” Roost laughed right back.

Huffing out a laugh through the tightness around his mouth, Sherlock squeezed his shoulder before stepping out of range. “You saw me yesterday.”

“So many hours,” Roost grinned, taking his failed attempt well. He looked too pleased to fall into his habit of talking a blue snark up anyone who caught him up to mischief.

“You going to stand there all night?” Sherlock smiled up at her.

“I don’t know,” she grinned. “Do you lot want your wonderful presents?”

“Yes! Yes!” Roost shouted. He considered lifting Johnny up, took a look at his brother’s face and abruptly turned to pick Sherlock up to spin him around instead. Irene took a page out of her husband’s book and snapped a picture of his long-suffering expression.

She descended the stairs; glittering, shining, and just the right flavor of perfect for the occasion.

All but Roost tried to look dignified, but she had seen their sweet little faces at Christmas. Roost galloped down the wall toward the family room and then turned on a heel to see how far along she was. It was easy to be in the midst of the Watsons, it was like being on stage with a whole crew of people to make her life easy and lovely.

“Escort me,” she told Sherlock, letting him hook their arms together, letting him pressing his head against her shoulder for a moment.

Sherlock’s eyes drooped downward, his mouth pressing still.

“Sherlock,” she smiled at him, that slow smile of her that got her whatever she wanted.

He smiled back, the soft lift of his mouth like a kiss to her cheek. “Irene. I don’t suppose you left Godfrey at home.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. One should never split up a perfect set.”

Sherlock nodded, looking away. For a moment he looked tight around the mouth, too stressed.

“Do we need to talk later?”

“I just need to let go. John told me about… John has…” he pressed his mouth together. He looked ahead to where Roost was disappearing after John. The two of them considered Roost.

“I just want John to be happy.”

“Has he said anything to indicate he isn’t?” Irene asked.

Sherlock’s face went pinched, “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Let’s focus on what’s important then, giving me praise for how good I am at things.”

Irene was used to making a stir when she walked into a room, she was gorgeous, but the reaction when they walked into the family room was a little more extreme than was usual. Tim had warned her of course about the younger Sherlock, the alternate Watson that wasn’t Hamish. She didn’t care much personally about it either way except for how it affected the family.

At their entrance the man who had to have been the fake Hamish stood up, his face tight and angry. Godfrey had been over by the boys talking to a silver haired she vaguely recognized, but went still with an eyebrow raised in artful warning. 

“Irene,” Faux-Watson said.

It wasn’t a question, but she was a grown up. “That’s what they tell me.”

Tim sat on the far sofa pretending not to pay attention. His mouth tight, his skin still looking a little pale and clammy. Poor grumpy darling.

“What are you doing here?” Sham Watson barked.

She took him in, the tuck of his shirt and the tick at his jaw. The fake Watson was angry, he wanted to be reassured that he still had an important part of his Sherlock’s life. She recognized the look from Johnny. Why that particular flavor of angry-defensive look was directed at her she couldn’t fathom. “I’m part of the family, darling, and I’m amazing. Everyone wants me everywhere. I am wondering what you lot are doing here.”

“Efficiency,” Tim said without even looking up. “And if anyone thinks Hamish is still alive even Bad Davey won’t be able to clean things up. And having them here will keep them safe.” That said he went back to what he was doing. If Tim was going to ignore everyone she was going to do the same.

“Is she your wife?” Not Hamish asked as she strolled past to curl up next to Tim. Over Tim’s shoulder she watched the maxed out score on his tetris game flash nines as he decimated the thing. 

Sherlock coughed out a surprised laugh at the same time she scoffed.

“He couldn’t afford me,” she specified.

“England couldn’t afford you,” Sherlock smiled at her, fond and amused overtop that blaring protective instinct. She would have loved to give him something subby to do to help him relax. Something repetitive. He would have adored unlocking and relocking doors, or maybe taking the whole door off the hinges and putting it back on again, hated it with a passion but adored it. Or maybe she would have had him do embroidery? No, he would have started punishing himself the second he slipped a stitch. Not that it would ever happen, she thought - feeling very much like the lead in some male written art film - she had something better now and so did he. Who knew being a grownup had so little to do with as much sex as possible.

Tim leaned back against her to wake her back up.

“Of course they couldn’t.” She turned to Counterfeit Watson, “Stop looming, it feels like a work Christmas party, the cast all standing around trying to get noticed by each other.”

“Oh,” said the pregnant woman, lovely eyes, wonderful face, total liar. Takes one to know one as Godfrey said. “You’re an actress?”

“In the opera,” Irene clarified. “I can do this trick where I can break glass with my voice. And make other people break glass with theirs. You know you really do have remarkable eyes.”

Approximate Hamish bristled and her Sherlock chuffed out a laugh again, affectionate and amused. The man took sentry on far side of the sofa where he could still reach the boys in a step without getting in their way.

“What’s your name then?” Irene asked her. “I can’t imagine how you’re connected with these idiots.”

“Oh,” she said again. Irene wondered what she’d look like with a gun. Probably even lovelier than she did now. “I’m Mary, and I’m married to John. And he’s friends with Sherlock. I’m friends with Sherlock too, I suppose.”

“Oh good, I do love when everyone is friendly with each other.”

“I bet,” It’ll-do Hamish muttered, fists clenched.

Godfrey stood up from where he was leaning against the wall.

There were several things she loved about Godfrey Norton. How decorative he looked next to her, the way he whispered goodnight, sweet prince to his phone before he plugged it in at night, and the way they could read each other’s minds from across the room. Neither of them gave a fat fig about Not Hamish and his weird lonesome jealousy, but they didn’t not care enough to ruin a family gathering over it.

“Actually that honor goes to me,” Godfrey said, looking like the personification of please don’t stop. 

“Who’re you?” Baby Sherlock finally spoke. “And what is Dimmock doing here?”

“Who am I?” Godfrey asked the universe in general and the room in the specific, ignoring the second question entirely. It was a stupid thing to ask anyway. Tim belonged everywhere. “Interesting question, one all men must ask themselves. International man of mystery, sometimes pirate, sometimes philosopher king. As much person of interest as an interesting person. At times a panegyric wiliiwaw, at time the edifier of man, but always willing to make pleasantries. To quote Emaleya– No, you won’t know who she is yet, I’ll give you something to look forward to, no spoilers and all that. To quote Coolio: ‘life is too short to not have fun; we are only here for a short time compared to the sun and the moon.’ No offense to Sherlock–”

“Since when?” her Sherlock snarked.

“Medium offense to Sherlock. For all his virtues he’s not the sort of man who would survive a marriage with Irene. She needs a moon to reflect the glory her of light and a sun to brighten her life. So I suppose like all people, I am just a man, just a sun and a moon, just a friend of the family. You may call me Godfrey Norton though, all the best people do. And well no offense–”

“Ha!” Sherlock said.

“Medium offense, I suppose you can call me Godfrey too.”

Irene golf clapped, John giggled, and Tim looked indulgent. Godfrey winked at her and bowed because it made the Watson boys look pleased and amused, good humor chasing the worry out of their sweet faces. No sooner had Godfrey finished then Roost gave the sort of full body start one usually associated with victims of electrocution.

“Beehive!” Roost shouted in Johnny’s ear from the look on the boy’s face. “Small indoor beehive!” The tension didn’t so much break as get startled away like a flock of birds, the boundary between the two small groups zipped away somewhere. “Irene got me an indoor beehive!” He clamored up to the sofa to give Irene another hug and then caught Tim up in a second one. She could feel the tremendous strength the boy hid under all those deceptive layers of clothes. As soon as she had time to process the immense gentleness he employed with her he darted over to Sherlock. He made a ruckus while Sherlock hmmed and asked questions. The two of them made quick work with the latches, opening up the layers of it. Whatever they were called, she didn’t need to know anything about bees to know Roost liked them. 

She leaned back a little so Tim would have a better view of his nephews.

“I’m fine,” Tim muttered to her.

She looked back at him, pressed her lips together. “Of course you are, darling. That’s why I’m sitting next to you, a woman has to know how to accessorize.”

“You’re terrible.” There was a crack in his mulish expression, a tiny one, but she knew how to spot someone cracking.

“I know, isn’t it amazing?”

After a moment of looking around the room, Baby Sherlock stood up from his place acting like a moping child in the corner of the room. He crept closer to Johnny, approaching him like a wild animal. “What–?” he said then swallowed the word. Johnny looked up at the man. The difference between the Sherlocks was more pressing than just the absence of age. Baby Sherlock looked broken somewhere under his coat. Like something had cracked, but he was trying to hold it together by moving very carefully. He was too thin, he hadn’t been taking care of his skin, and his hair hadn’t been trimmed properly.

Tim’s shoulder tensed under her hand and Johnny perked up toward his uncle like a hound on the scent. They squinted at each other, looking about as related as two people could until Tim huffed and went back to his phone.

Baby Sherlock looked between the two men in confusion, but then Johnny wasn’t looking up at him. When Johnny looked at someone they looked back.

“We’re both baby brothers,” Johnny said, finally turning to the man. Baby Sherlock blinked down at him; knocked off balance for a moment before recovering. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“Overprotective brother?” Sherlock asked.

“Yeah.”

“Slander,” Roost said, as automatic a reaction as an atomic clock.

“You want to sit down with me? You’re allowed, you know.”

Baby Sherlock sat, his coat losing its imposition to curl around him like a child’s security blanket. “What did you get?”

Johnny carefully opened the wrapping paper, because of course he did, to reveal the neat plaid coat. He smiled at Irene, his sweet face with its sweet sticking out ears utterly adorable. “Thank you, Irene, this is very thoughtful.” He opened his mouth as though to say something else, probably about how expensive it looked, but she cut that off at the pass.

“Of course it is,” she smiled back, not able to help her fondness. Tim was her favorite, of course, and Roost after him but she still adored Johnny. “Tim helped with the size, of course. I could have guessed, but I haven’t seen you in person since last Christmas and I like to be precise. Put it on.”

While Johnny navigated standing up and getting the coat on, her Sherlock reached across to squeeze her hand, once. “Thank you, Irene.”

When she nodded he turned away again, so when Johnny beamed at Sherlock in his little coat, all blue-black and green and gold, Sherlock could nod and look parental at him.

“It’s a very nice coat,” Baby Sherlock said, awkward as a school boy.

Johnny beamed at him too, the brightness of his face seeming to freeze the man in place. “Ta, plaid is my favorite color,” he said and he and Roost snorted out a laugh while Sherlock tried not to look a little pained. 

What a little lost schoolboy Baby Sherlock looked.

“I’m sorry this is so new and strange for you,” Johnny told him, swinging for the metaphorical jaw out of nowhere. 

There it was, the moment they had all been waiting for. Baby Sherlock seemed to sense the change in the room, so did the Watsons. Mary’s hand curled around her stomach.

“It must be comforting to be loved by so many people. There’s that at least.”

“Is there?” Baby Sherlock asked, looking half hypnotized.

“Your Wa– W–” He had to close his eyes, look away, swallow.

Roost sat Sherlock back down when he tried to stand, “He’s not a child.”

Johnny swallowed, nodded to himself. “Your Watson, he wants to keep you safe like my Watson wanted to keep my Sherlock safe. Funny how it crawls up on you. Love,” he said like the softest spoken catapult. “Being cared about and caring about things. It just comes suddenly, doesn’t it? Like the east wind.”

Sherlock sat back, leaned back, pulled back from the words before he could check himself. It was the sort of thing Hamish could do, according to her Sherlock. He’d say words, just words that meant nothing, just arrangements of letters. Somehow they meant something to the person he spoke them to though. Somehow they were just the words to catch someone between the ribs and break them open. Her Sherlock had been thankful for it. It helped him be kinder to Johnny and he would always be thankful for that. It made him feel seen.

“Is that something we need to worry about, the East Wind?” Baby Sherlock asked.

“He’ll come when he wants to. Seven tomorrow, probably, depending on traffic. But there’ll always be two of us, majority rules for now.”

“Which two?” Mary asked.

“There’s Tim’s entourage,” he nodded toward Tim and Irene. “Then there’s Roost, he’s not armed but he’s physically stronger as long as he remembers he is. Then there’s me, Sherlock is with me.”

“Sherlock raised you then?” Approximate Hamish said.

“Who else would you have raise your child?” Johnny asked him.

Imitation Hamish blinked at that, but nodded at it, looking a little discomfited.

“Tim helped too from time to time,” Johnny said

“Don’t blame yourself on me,” Tim said.

“Who’s the fifth then?” Mary asked. “There’s four of you, the four winds I suppose. But there are five sets of pieces on the war room table. Who’s the fifth?”

Her Sherlock smiled at the woman, “You’d be surprised how no one ever thinks to ask.”

“Will you look at the time,” Tim drawled. “It’s dinner, who wants to go eat cake.”

The Watsons fled in mass for the living room.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft learns to fear the blade of truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by Caroline, fretting by me.

Mycroft had heard what Sherlock hadn’t said. I ought to call David right now and let him hear what the boy’s breathing sounds like. Wait until Roost hears.

Mycroft looked at the top of Roost’s head, the sunspot of his hair flaring up above the back of the arm chair, threads of amber and ruby quills tangled into a puff ball. The boy had been sitting in the dark all this time, too upset to trust himself with the fireplace, or perhaps enjoying the way the dark muted his senses. He didn’t bother with the drudging logic puzzle that was the slow addition of observational data, he simply sieved it in and looked at the shape of the conclusion. The weight of Roost’s stillness.

Roost hummed to himself, the long drawn out sounds of a violin.

Setting down his briefcase and coat, Mycroft went to pour a generous two fingers at the sideboard. The usual machinery of his mind turned into a fist, clenched solid. Perhaps he’d been waiting for something like this. (He had.)

He was surprised there wasn’t a teapot, the Watsons produced an abundance of tea.

“Have you come to excise me from the family then?” Mycroft asked the wallpaper.

It wouldn’t be that easy though, not after all the time they’d spent together. The way Mycroft had tried to make him a pseudo-Sherlock. The boy was slier than that, and kinder. Kindness, the subtle sadist’s weapon of choice. 

There was silence but for the hum of the lamp and the hum of Roost, heels up in the cushion of the chair, shoes somewhere else. Mycroft watched him chew at a cuticle. He shouldn’t have said anything. Wasted words were a sign of a weak mind.

“If my dad faked his death it would have been the worst thing in the world.”

Mycroft coughed while drinking then choked.

Roost’s eyes flicked to him.

Once Mycroft had stopped, Roost set one foot on the carpeting. “It would have been the worst thing in the world if he had faked his death and left us alone and never came back.”

Breath stopped in his lungs, Mycroft had the terrifying sensation that he was utterly transparent. Gauze thin, fluttering in the wind and that his unfettered feebleness had been discovered. That his failure was improbably loud and his estimate of how bad this could get was woefully inaccurate.

“You were so angry, so angry you had to hurt someone.”

“Are you going to tell me what I wanted then?” Mycroft snarled, braced his hand on the flat of the sideboard and braced himself like a barnacle.

Roost’s eyes went big and soft. He sniffed. “Go on then. If you won’t listen. Hurt me then, it’s easy. I don’t fight back.”

“You don’t control me.” Mycroft pointed at him. “You may have your hooks into everyone else with those big injured eyes, but you don’t control me.”

Roost just sat there with his hands curled around his knees. He just sat there, with those wet eyes.

“Say it, I want you to,” Mycroft snapped at him. His tumbler thumped back onto the board.

“You don’t control me,” Roost just parroted back, pausing to sniff in the middle. “You have your hooks into everyone else, but you don’t control me.”

Mycroft–

Mycroft, he–

Mycroft–

“It’s okay to be angry and not know what to do.” Then Roost stopped, swiped at the moisture coming out of his eyes. Wiping away tears and saying the opposite of what he expected. “You’re just going to be keep being angry and not knowing what to do until you stop.”

Every possible outcome, every calculation… Mycroft was stuck, stuck, stuck. Felt something in his mind, a lever perhaps, or some piston, pushing and pushing but hitting something first. Jamming fast. He was so helpless. 

Roost just sat there watching him.

“You have to stop Mycroft. You have to do something different.”

“There’s nothing different to do! If there was something different I would have done it.” He wished he was Italian. Italians were excellent at this kind of thing. “Can you even conceive of how smart I am? Are you even smart enough to comprehend it? What it’s like to be the smartest man in the city? I have to talk to those filthy, abhorrent, slow pigs. Goldfish! Bottom feeders! I have to be nice to them, to bow and scrape to them. And I have you, with the emotional intelligence of a turnip, swanning in here, into my house to preach to me about forgiveness?”

He stood, he loomed, he watched the boy drip onto the upholstery. 

“You want to talk about forgiveness?” he continued, disassociating, feeling himself pull back from his skin. “About moving on? I have to forgive, I have to play nice; I’m not nice, I’m not forgiving anyone. The only reason you want me to be forgiving it to make life more convenient for you the way you always have. If anyone should have special treatment it’s me after having to deal with such imbeciles every day without starting up a nuclear war and having to go along behind you cleaning up your messes.”

He let himself gesture, let his arms slice indignant paths through the air. “I was the one who had to explain things to Mummy every time you almost died. Wading through crack dens, because the world was too loud and everyone was too mean. If anyone should complain it’s me. I’m the one who deserves the special treatment. I’m the one that’s been suffering. I’m the one who should have been chosen. He should have picked me! I don’t have to forgive him, Sherlock, he ruined my life!” He realized what he said far too pull it back in his mouth.

He felt his eyes widen, he had to stop himself from looking around the room.

There was nowhere to hide, just what he said and Roost watching him.

“Dad didn’t ruin your life, you did that by yourself. You don’t understand what smart means,” Roost told him. Dismissed him. Held out a piece of paper between two fingers.

Mycroft took it, read over it, had to sit down. The chair was too stiff for him to slump into, too formal even after years of use. It was in bullet points, in John’s squarish handwriting with a few annotations by David.

“John didn’t get your pissfit one hundred percent correct,” Roost told him. “He said you’d call them cattle, not pigs during your little rant.”

Mycroft breathed in through his nose and then back out again. “And what, you just read over what John said I’d say and decided to come over and take the abuse to prove a point?”

“No,” Roost said. “I knew you’d be angry and say dumb stuff you don’t really mean.”

“Don’t I?” Mycroft asked him, a little dizzy. “Don’t I mean it? I said it.”

“Don’t be dense. A wolf in a trap will chew off his own leg.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?”

(Mycroft knew exactly what it was supposed to mean.)

His mind was still clenched closed, perhaps Roost was here to crack it open.

Roost set his other foot on the ground. With his body stretched out like a proper human being Mycroft could see the muscle he had been piling on lately. “If Dad had faked his death that would be the worst thing in the world. And you were scared that he had and you didn’t know what to do. Because not a lot of people like you. You’re mean and the worst. Except me. I like you. I think you can be a good friend. And if my dad had hurt me like that.” Roost stopped to take a deep breath and wipe at his face. “If he did that then it would have broken my heart.”

It would have.

“But I don’t need you, there’s nothing you could do that I need except to be my friend. So. So you called me Sherlock and yelled at me.” His hands picked at the arm of Mycroft’s armchair. “So you made Johnny look at a man that looked like our dad. I can be your friend and not have to need you.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.” Roost sat up, hands clenched until his nails bit into his palms and his focus tightened. “It makes me sad that you keep thinking about me like I don’t know what I’m feeling or doing. I’m not a child any more than John is. It makes me sad that instead of just trying to be my friend and be good to me you try to make me do what you want by doing all this complicated brain things to me.”

Mycroft clenched his hands on his lap. The boy struggled enough to talk in a straight line. He didn’t want to say anything to disrupt him.

“You don’t have to fool us to be in our family. You just have to want to be.”

“That’s it?” Mycroft said, not really making an effort to hold back his sarcasm.

When Roost stood up there was blood under his nails. “When I was little I didn’t know Davey was my brother. Genetically. I didn’t know that. Only that he cared about me and wanted me to be safe. That was all he wanted. And when I was older I didn’t know Johnny was my brother, only that he wanted me to not be lonely. When things were loud I would touch his soft baby hair and when I got hurt he would fix me. My dad wasn’t my real dad, but he picked me up from school and let me text on his phone and he hugged me. I told him octopus facts. I’ve talked a lot.”

Mycroft waited.

He looked at the crown molding and chewed on his cuticle again.

Mycroft’s internal clock counted up to five minutes.

“He decided to be our dad,” Roost finally said. “He just decided he loved us and he would take care of us so we could be brothers. He loved us more than anyone else in the whole world and he made us happy and safe and real. Loved us enough to live for us and to die for us. You haven’t been that Mycroft. You haven’t been a house for ghosts and fake people, you haven’t been somewhere to live while your tenets tore up your floorboards and rattled their chains. We tore him up, we made him chose, and he chose us over everything.”

The boy’s long body was a bowstring with an arrow drawn back. Where it would strike was still yet to be seen.

“Grendel hurt him really bad. He almost killed him. He almost made him not exist anymore.” Roost pressed his fingers over his lips, whispered through them like the wind. “But he still came back. He came back and gave me a hug and let me hold his hand. He came back so Davey wouldn’t be alone during the wedding.”

Mycroft pressed his own fingers to his lips.

The two of them stood in the shadow of some great and terrible fairy tale wood in which dwelled a hulking monster shuffling its way forward. Its name was truth and it had no mercy for men like Mycroft. Roost though, Roost was a child of the air.

Roost had no mercy because being innocent never had known a need for it. The closest thing to it he knew was kindness, but kindness was the twin sister of cruelty. Often they swung the same knife.

(Mycroft could feel that knife hovering as though through some fine sense.)

There in the tremble of the air he felt the blade rise up, up, up over him.

Already the vision of Roost’s set jaw, his bloody nails, his eyes tinged pink from crying pricked against his chest. Marked where the knife would plunge true into his heart.

“I miss my daddy, Mycroft.”

There was the blade so guilelessly drawn, so guilelessly driven to the hilt.

“I know what it means. I know what I mean,” the boy told him. When Roost looked at Mycroft again his eyes were very old. “Don’t ever do something like that to us ever again. We won’t let you pretend it was an accident a second time. Even Bad Davey has to follow the rules. I suggest you think about what it is you want and how much of a grown up you’re willing to be to get it.”

The part of Mycroft that was ruining his life wondered what right Roost had to tell him all those things. To make him responsible for his own actions like this. To take an iron bar to the knees of Mycroft’s personal uber mensch. 

The rest of him just kept playing those words over and over in his head. That Roost missed his daddy. The soft way Roost’s mouth dipped down at the corners.

Mycroft had heard Sherlock’s silent warning: wait until Roost hears.

At least the boy wouldn’t ask him if he wanted to be better. Wouldn’t force him to take that kind of personal responsibility. It was enough to make Mycroft accept his agency in his failure as a man or his happiness. To slice him open and make him look at himself.

Roost nodded at him, nodded at the bookcases, nodded at the chairs and walked out of the room.

Mycroft needed to get to work.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People ask questions and then they eat breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betaed by Caroline. Trigger warning for discussion of depression and suicide, I tried to keep it light.

John woke up angry and confused. Angry he didn’t mind, he usually felt angry. Confused he had a problem with. He held onto the confusion and the anger because certainty hid behind them. The same certainty he’d had years ago, looking at a serial killer through windows and over Sherlock’s shoulder. He saw it in this strange mirror world, with its clean 221B, and it’s older Sherlock. He could smell it, hear it like a death keel.

In this universe he’d killed himself.

He’d picked up the gun like he’d always imagined, or let himself fall onto the tracks on the way back from Ella’s, or a million other possibilities he’d thought of.

This other older Sherlock, when he’d come up the stairs raging like a madman, like a murderer, for that one moment he’d looked at John and his face had cracked from top to bottom and for a moment John had felt…

He’d felt vindicated for all the pain Sherlock made him suffer, hated himself a little for that, and he’d been certain, somehow, that he’d killed himself.

Then there had been the boy who looked just like him, down to the pot handled ears his mum used to tug at on good days. She’d tell him not to boil over. On bad days she tried to bring as little attention to him and Harry as possible.

For a moment the broken terror on the boy’s face had made John think he’d…

But no, everyone talked about Hamish with something like worship. Hamish would never have lifted a finger against his boys. That adoration was a bit of a bitter pill. Sherlock wouldn’t give him the time of day and a whole household of people could hardly live without Hamish. It was more than that though, something had happened. Something big. It was like he could see its shape under some great sheet, but not what it was. How could he have done it with three children? And that Roost boy, he never would have left the boy if he could help it. He had a brightness that reminded John of Sherlock, but with a welcoming affection instead of a skulk. How John had ever produced someone that lanky was beyond him. And then that little boy, maybe all of fifteen, so not so little, but so like himself. How could he have left his children?

Mary had approached the question of what was happening with her usual practicality. What needed to be done, doing it, and thinking on it while she went. A very womanly way of dealing with problems, he thought, trusting oneself to work the problem out. He could do with being a little more womanly.

She huffed as she sat up, letting out a tight laugh as he helped her resettle her center of gravity.

“Thank you, dear.”

He grunted.

“Come now, dear, don’t you want to meet the East Wind?”

“Do you know what the East Wind is?”

“I know you’re not going to mansplain it to me,” she smiled back at him, fluttering her eyelashes twice in a way that made him half amused, half enamored. “But I take that it means something special to Sherlock.”

“Mycroft used to tell him the East Wind was coming to get him with the rest of the wicked.”

“Well,” Mary said. “We’ll just have to be very good then.”

Whatever John’s face looked like, it made Mary have to try not to laugh. He didn’t like how pale and worried she looked under her cheer. He felt something like an internal gravity pull him toward her.

“Are you alright, Mary?”

Her face went still, thoughtful. “It occurred to me that they aren’t going to let us leave this house. That I may have to have this baby here.”

“If it comes to it we’ll get you out.” The certainty there sounded weak, even to him.

“I know you’ll try your best,” she told him. “I’ve always loved that about you.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek. It was something to the two of them, trying their best. “Help me downstairs.”

She didn’t really need the help, but she seemed to know when he needed to feel like she was safe. That he had a use.

Mostly that he had a use. If he was certain of one thing, she didn’t need him to protect her.

The halls of the house were covered in art he felt like he should know in a proliferation that seemed suspicious. The sort of thing he noticed, but wasn’t smart enough to make the necessary deductive connections. They moved down the narrow stairs to the kitchen, the sort of understated, chrome covered kitchen that paid real money to look like it hadn’t. There was a man sitting at the breakfast bar, one hand on his mug, another on the newspaper in front of him. When he looked up his eyes looked the sort that sharks had. Cold, hard, and hungry for something. He watched them over the top of his mug for a moment and then looked back down to his paper.

Next to him, made almost invisible by the cold dead concern on the man’s face, was Mycroft looking older and penitent. He hadn’t aged as well as the odd Sherlock had, seemed to be stuck between the self-knowledge of his middle age and the indomitable establishment of his older years. His hair looked watered down, much more ginger, his face pinched.

He also looked tired and apologetic.

When they took a step farther into the room, there was his Sherlock, looking the right age if not as happy. There was a shine to his face that made John’s belly tighten. It was something like panic. All tightly packed up and smoothed over, but panic nonetheless. 

“Sherlock?” he tried.

Sherlock just shook his head, once, tight. Of course he did, why would he tell John anything? John was only useful as far as a case went before he went back to being disposable again. No, that wasn’t quite fair. It was important to be fair.

Something occurred to John. He turned to Mycroft, looked at his pressed white lips and his clenched white hand on the handle of his umbrella. “Didn’t they say Bad Davey would attack you if you came here?”

“There are some things that are more important.”

“Like what?”

“I won’t lie and say being kind,” Mycroft said, voice quiet.

Sherlock laughed once. When Mycroft gave him a look, grave and weighted, he shut his mouth with a hush of sound.

“Because there are principles that must be upheld, because I would be less of a person if I didn’t.”

“And you can’t stand to be any less than anyone else, can you?” John said.

Mycroft made that pinched face that was its own little victory.

“This seems like a lot of smoke and mirrors. A lot of threats without anything behind it,” John said. “He says this and she says that and it’s all very scary, but there’s no proof of any of this. We’re just trapped in this house.”

Mycroft blinked at him. “I’m going to have to get used to you being dull.”

John could feel himself bristle an extra few inches to his height.

“I don’t mean any offense by it. Hamish had the particular genius of reading intentions so well that he could seem preternatural. It gave him a few strange blind spots, but made him unsurpassable in others. He’d be able to look at this house and the people in it and know he was in danger in a second. There’s the fact that Sherlock is afraid to serve as sign enough,” Mycroft pointed at his brother with his umbrella and then over his shoulder at the windows. “Then there’s the windows, all bulletproof. The walls that are all a foot thick, the art which is all both priceless and shows signs of being involved in the black market.

“You’ve met the other Watsons. There’s something off about them. The way they move, the way they look at people, the way they dress.”

There had been.

“Doesn’t John look just a little too much like you?”

He did.

“There’s even David’s man here, or perhaps John’s. The boy is already developing his father’s thrall. But then so has David. Sherlock has already figured some of it out, but would you like to ask him how he came to work for Bad Davey?”

John hated these kind of games.

“How did you start working for Bad Davey then?” John asked.

“I was sent to assassinate his second in command,” the man said, looking up, eyes blank in the front, but something burning low behind them. It was like looking through one-sided glass. The man seemed to realize euphemism wouldn’t work and went for alarming honesty. “Bad Davey encouraged me to pull out all my teeth and eat them.”

John stared at him. He could feel the long seconds in the man’s unflinching gaze and in his own shock. He had to keep running the words around in his head to make sense of them. “You’re joking.”

“I never joke about Bad Davey,” the man said, pulling up the corner of his lip with his thumb to show the pale artificial pink of his dentures.

“So you just work for him now?” Mary asked.

The man lowered his hand, set it down in front of him. “They’re just teeth. I could get implants if dentures weren’t so convenient to hide things in. He could have taken my hands, my eyes. I wouldn’t have been able to shoot anymore.”

In one of those Holmsian leaps of logic that John usually never got to have, he figured out that the man was a soldier. The man had been a soldier and was discharged and had needed excitement just like John had and now he was sitting here with dentures in his mouth. John wondered if anyone had asked him Afghanistan or Iraq?

The man swallowed, his hands twitched on the newspaper. “At least I had a chance. The man who sent me to do the job sent me to what should have been my death. Bad Davey actually protects the people working for him. He protects me now. He’s hard, but hard like justice.”

That was monstrous.

Monstrous and understandable in a feudal way.

Bad Davey said danger and pull out your teeth and the man ran after him.

John had certainly ran after someone who’d asked too much of him, who was he to judge.

“Still, powerful as he is,” Mycroft said. “There are rules he must follow, that all the Watsons must follow. They can’t tell you about what they are–”

“That’s the second time that’s happened,” Sherlock interrupted.

Mycroft inclined his head in question.

“What. That’s the second time someone said what. What they are.”

“I’m sure it was a slip of the tongue,” the man said, his voice sounded somehow loaded and cocked, lifted half out of its holster. “I’m sure Mr. Holmes meant to say who.”

“Who they are, of course.” Mycroft’s voice was as crisp, as thin as expensive china. “You’re coming at this all out of context, looking at this from the wrong angle.” He looked at his brother, his face creased by a sorrow that had been aged like whiskey. “I recognize the way you look Sherlock, the way you looked here years ago. If our worlds are alike then something terrible might happen. You need to understand what happened here.”

“And we should just trust you?”

“I’m relieved you’re cautious, still you know my method. I’m still your brother.”

“Go ahead then, Mycroft,” Sherlock said. “You’re not a Watson, you don’t have to follow the rules. You can tell us whatever you want. And you’re the one who knows the most, all the little pieces. You’re the only one smart enough to put the pieces together and tell us about it.”

Mycroft looked down, adjusting his umbrella on the breakfast bar, while giving the impression of looking at everyone at once. “It’s sometimes better to tell this part like a fairytale.”

“Once upon a time there was a little boy?” Mary asked.

Mycroft smiled the most nonsmile smile John had ever seen and he’d seen some. “Something like that. Two little orphan boys, babes in the wood. All the boys had in the whole world was each other and their big, enormous brains. Hamish and Timothy, although in those days Hamish may have gone by John.”

Mycroft lifted his eyebrows, still looking down. “One day a man found them. A scientist. He flattered them, offered them gifts and friendship. His name was Grendel, appropriately enough.” Something happened to Mycroft’s face when he said the name, a new level of revulsion, John’s stomach twisted into a knot. “They were still young. He told them something convincing, something woefully inaccurate. ‘Since we’re such good friends. Why don’t you do this experiment with me? You’ll get to help me with my very important work.’”

“Of course they said yes,” John breathed out.

He smiled, slow and frail. He told them about Grendel’s genetic engineering built an army of children, more intelligent, more dangerous, more disposable. How the whole thing was beyond covert. Mycroft laid out the facts the medical tests, the child who killed his agents and was killed. Told them about his broken mind and the equations carved into the meat of his skin.

With all the precision of pathologist Mycroft laid out the rotten corpse of the thing. The first generation’s violence, ferocity, that they lacked that line humanity demanded men not pass. Told them all but one who learned what he lacked, who loved somehow and bore his teeth at the world.

“Bad Davey,” Mary had croaked. “Head of the family. All those children.”

Then had come the second generation, less violent and less focused, brilliant minds and no sensory filters. Roost had been among them once, and now handled dead bodies like discarded pieces of clothing. The third generation met better success. The machinery Grendel had developed to advance the children’s brains less likely to cause madness. At four Dr. Watson was a pocket-sized surgeon, fully trained, fully qualified. With mechanical dispassion he laid out how Grendel’s success destroyed him. The last generation was cohesive, intelligent, stable.

The children began to organize.

“They revolted,” John breathed out. He saw in his mind faceless children fighting against the only caregivers they had known, against full-sized adult soldiers who had killed children before. His voice did something wet and sorry. “They tried to revolt.” 

“Yes.”

John stood up quickly, paced in ragged steps, the rhythm uneven. “John, the young John, he’s my clone? Hamish’s clone?”

“In more ways than one.”

“What about the other children?” John asked.

“Johnny won’t talk about some things, not to me. But to Sherlock. He thinks the sun rises and sets in Sherlock. He adores him.”

“What did he tell him then?” Sherlock asked, voice hoarse.

“The conflict created a leak. The brothers discovered what had been done. They would have put a stop to it sooner if they knew. Tighter than a knot those two, and with terrifying morality. Tim is so stubborn he almost ruined two of my best interrogators and Watson was even harder to pin down. He had a multitude of pretty tricks, very artsome.” Something like temper flashed through Mycroft’s frame. Another crack in his composure. It unsettled John, made him feel unbalanced.

“Grendel killed all those children,” John said, then balked. “They can’t have! This is Britain!”

“You’d be surprised what Britain will do,” Mycroft told him. “And it wasn’t strictly governmental. Grendel didn’t seem to sort to enjoy regulation.”

“Grendel used the Watson’s DNA for the majority of his project,” Mary said. 

“Not just theirs, but you’re essentially correct,” Mycroft said. “Hamish had… quite a temper. He destroyed all of Grendel’s work, his facility, his notes, his staff, freed the surviving children. Watson wasn’t satisfied cutting off the branches, he wanted to destroy the tree down to the root. He was most… precise in his work.”

John bet he was, he would have followed Grendel to the ends of the earth. Children. John’s children!

“He needed to do more than remove Grendel, he needed to protect his children from people Grendel might use to help him with future projects,” Mycroft continued.

“Moriarty,” Sherlock breathed out. “That sort of technology, disposable child soldiers. Your enemies won’t fire on them, but the children are fully combat trained. You wouldn’t even have to grow them yourself, with the help of that technology. There are orphans everywhere, just hook them up to the machinery.”

“Bad Davey was given the criminal underworld,” Mycroft continued. “He is like a dark sun in a dark system, worlds of criminal activity orbiting him deep enough in the shadows that Moriarty overlooked him, that even I overlooked him. Davey kept in eye out for very specific things, specific patterns. He cut the strings to Moriarty’s web out from under him, slow and careful enough the man didn’t notice and then while Moriarty balanced on a thin thread Bad Davey removed him.”

“Removed him?” John asked. “What does that mean?”

“Who can say what the East Wind does with the chaff he blows away?” Mycroft said. 

“What about Roost and Johnny?” John found himself asking.

“I haven’t figured out what the plans for Roost are yet, but the boy is very like his father. Very good. Johnny was given to Sherlock years ago while Watson was still destroying Grendel. Almost a year before Watson’s death.”

“Watson– Hamish knew he was going to die that early then?” John asked and the entire weight of Mycroft’s attention hit him in the center of the chest like a sledgehammer. He took a step back, wavering at it.

“What an interesting thing to say.”

“Not– Not really.”

“How did you know Hamish killed himself?”

John trembled, mouth pressed together.

“Oh,” Mycroft sagged back. “In all of the factors I never figured in depression, I don’t know why. That would take the hesitation out of the act once he was decided. I suppose I wanted everything to be clever, everything to be cold. You’re very human, aren’t you? I don’t suppose you have an opinion on why?”

“Everyone,” John started and then stopped. That wasn’t where he wanted to take it. “When you’re a father it has to be the kids first, it always has to be the kids first even when you take the afternoon off for a kip. You’re getting your sanity back so you can stay a good parent for them. Those three boys knew too much, had seen too much.”

He could feel everyone look at him, feel them stare. 

He had to keep going though or the thought would never get out of him, it would just circle around and around. “And Johnny was sent to live with Sherlock, the obvious choice, but that meant he was around Sherlock and you, and the two of you see everything. I never would have done that if I wasn’t worried someone else was already looking. That and,” he had to rearrange his thoughts under the scrutiny. “I can tell already I would have hated to be away from the boys. I don’t know them well at all but I can tell I would have– I’d just have to make sure any threats were looking at me first, me last. I’d– I’d have to keep my children safe.”

Mycroft tilted his head for John to go on.

“If the children staged a revolt with Grendel, I would have to fight back harder to cover their competence. Have to take more of Grendel’s angry pride for myself, offend him more than my boys. If John was interesting I would have to be more interesting. If Roost and Davey were odd, I would have to be odder. And then when the boys were safe, I’d have to make sure–” John swallowed. “How did I do it?”

“Saint Bart’s. You tried to get Sherlock out of the country, as far away as possible so he wouldn’t have to see and I outmaneuvered myself and sent him there just in time.” The guilt and pain clawed their way across Mycroft’s face in a way that John had never seen and suddenly John knew that this was the real Mycroft, that everything Mycroft said was true. That admission looked like it had cost Mycroft more than he’d ever paid in his life.

Sherlock made a sound like he’d been gutted.

“That’s it, the end of the story. Happily ever after.”

“Is it?” Mary asked.

“Bad Davey runs the underworld, Roost has the British Government at his disposal, John has Sherlock, Irene and Godfrey have distracted each other. Timothy has a family. Moriarty has found himself dropped into some burning pit I don’t doubt. Watson got what he wanted.”

“Augustus Milverton?” Sherlock asked.

“The newspaper man? Belongs to Davey,” the dead-eyed man said.

“How?” Sherlock leaned forward.

“Davey showed him what happens to people who don’t know how to keep a civil tongue,” the man said simply.

Part of John thought that meant cutting out his tongue, but somehow he imagined what Davey had in mind was worse.

“Baskerville?” Sherlock pressed.

“No involvement,” Mycroft answered, waving a dismissive hand.

“Mrs. Hudson?”

“Happily living at Baker Street.”

“Me?” Mary asked.

“I don’t know,” Mycroft admitted, “I’ve never seen you before. I could locate you if you’d like.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

Mycroft tilted his head again.

“So, Davey’s here,” John said. “Hamish’s eldest son. He’s waiting somewhere here in the house.”

“In the dining room, sir.” The dead-eyed man turned back to his paper even as Mycroft stood.

“I suppose you should go in,” Mycroft told them. “I’ve kept you long enough. If you get yourselves killed it will be your own fault.”

John took a step toward the door when Davey’s man cleared his throat.

“Will you put your gun on the table please, sir?” the man asked, not looking up.

A defensive heat started in John’s sternum and curled up over his shoulders. “What?”

“You have a habit of keeping a gun at the small of your back.”

“How do you know what my habits are?” John shot back.

“Dr. Watson has a habit of keeping a gun at the small of his back, and he’s just like his father.”

“Dr. Watson?” he had that feeling of confusion and vertigo again. “Johnny. Mycroft said he’s a doctor. This whole place is impossible.”

“You’ve come from another universe, an exact replica of the brother’s father.”

“I’m not their father,” John said, feeling light headed. It would be important to remember that.

“Just so, you’ll still have to leave your gun behind.”

“John,” Mary said, her voice had that new edge she’d just started using. The hard, experienced edge. He and that edge came to cross purposes sometimes, but he trusted it. “You should leave your gun behind.”

He slid it out, the separation like a loss of a limb, and set it in front of the man. The dead-eyed man blinked once, nodded, and went back to his paper.

Mary took John by the hand and lead him away, pushing open the breakfast door and walking through before he could get in front of her. 

And then there they were.

A ginger man sat at the table, his eyes burning dark, sometimes looking black and sometimes blue in the light. 

John blinked, took a breath, tried to keep breathing. 

Davey’s pale face was all flexing muscle and sharp angles as if someone had starched and pressed him into something barely sheathed. Like a razor blade. In front of him there was a wall of breakfast, too many pastries, too many silver platters with silver lids, the heavy smell of bacon, of sausage, too many piles of split open fruit.

The man’s face, the overburdened table, the way the man sat, long fingers ticking against the embroidered tablecloth reminded John of some terrible fairy tale. He couldn’t remember the rules for fairy tales, were they supposed to eat, or supposed to avoid eating?

“Bad Davey?” Mary asked, moving to the table.

The man looked from Mary’s face, to her heavy stomach, to the wallpaper.

His pale face had the waneness to it as though he’d been terribly ill not too long ago. As though he was still spread thin and exhausted. There was tightness around his mouth, dark shadows under his eyes. It made him look savage, desperate. It made the violence stand out under skin, like the bones on a starving man.

He looked like John when he woke the first time out of surgery.

He looked like he was hurting. It occurred to John with a clunk that the ginger man missed his father. It occurred to John that not all fathers were like his own, that he wouldn’t be like his father. It occurred to him that Davey had lost a man that had understood what he’d done and forgiven him and loved him and then died.

Greg sat to Davey right, and blinked at the crowd that had come in, posture relaxed and plate full.

“Hello,” John said, wanting anything but to cause the man pain.

He looked at the man looking at the wallpaper. Davey looked younger by the second, something crumpling in his face.

“Don’t tell me I don’t have to talk to you. Someone has to,” Bad Davey leveled a look of utter contempt at him. John had spent enough time around Harry to know what it was really about, he didn’t take it personally. “Don’t be kind to me.”

That’s the kind of father John was then. A kind one who taught his son to be a bulwark. He stood straighter, leveled a look of respect at the man. He felt a flood of sadness. Davey looked so put together, so in control of himself. He would have liked to have known what the boy was like as a child. He liked that Davey was angry, that he was ready to fight, he liked that he was defending himself. If the other him was here, John thought he would have liked it too.

Greg cleared his throat, not a little awkward and obvious about not knowing what was going on.

“Mycroft!” Davey snapped and burst up to his feet. 

“I didn’t think you’d prefer it if I just snuck out the back, I’ve done my duty and now I’ll remove myself from the house.”

He pointed one finger. “I’ll remove you from the house. You are unbelievable.” He bristled with menace, like a wild fox trapped in a crate. He seized a pomegranate from the table and with brute force rent it. Seeds and fruit exploded over the table, bounced off everyone in the blast zone, bled down his pale hands.

“Of course,” Mycroft said. “I understand.”

“At least someone does, I’m working with amateurs.”

“Sir,” the dead-eyed man said, relaxed at the shoulders as he held the door open for Mycroft’s exit.

“Don’t you sir me, I will become very displeased with you, I will throw you out a window! It’ll be a rainy day fluro socks before I’ll put up with your sass.”

“Of course, sir.” The man looked entirely unconcerned.

Davey threw his arms up in the air, the implicit threat explicitly gone. He looked prickly, dangerous, but amiable. Willing to listen to them at least. He sank back down into his seat and claimed a tea pot in a plaid cozy for himself. “This is what I have to work with. My life is tragedy. Everyone might as well have breakfast.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a very (so very, sorry if you’re not used to my symbolic writing) strange and very long chapter, but my very favorite ones to write, I really wanted to expand a few of parts, but its just didn’t work. I debated about chapter order for ages, but I think this is the right order of things. 
> 
> So! Enjoy!
> 
> Beted by Caroline, but I fiddled about after her edits, all errors are mine.

At a safe distance from his family, Roost held tight. His hand burned with a high throbbing pain, the feeling of being flailed and destroyed. He felt as though he were sliding down the gullet of some long throated creature into his own grave. The feeling overtook him of bobbing into place, of coming to a stop.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin,” Roost muttered.

He opened his eyes.

He recognized the bedroom.

(He didn’t recognize it at all.)

His fingers ticked across the weave of the counterpane, his nails scratched over the texture of the wallpaper. The door felt real against his palms, against his cheek. It opened almost silent and he crossed into the hall. His feet settled on the dark wood floor of 221B, then on the thin padding of the rug. (Eighty-five percent of all American produced rugs are created within sixty miles of Dalton, Georgia. Forty-five percent of the world’s carpeting is supplied there. Due to pricing a majority of corpses disposed of in carpeting comes from Georgia.)

It was too much, too much, too much. Couldn’t trust his senses, had to trust the internal regulatory system.

“You need to focus,” Ormond told him. Roost looked at him, at his fine mustache, and the way he stood with his weight slightly to the left. Ready to spring, ready to fight. A face like the rising dawn.

Roost closed his eyes to cut down on the visual data. (Individuals in sensory deprivation chambers frequently reported visual and auditory hallucinations.)

He could still feel the movement of the air in the room, the smell of formaldehyde, paper, and the homey warmth of lived on upholstery. Some other sense, something that vibrated electric along the inside of his spine, made him aware of the height and breadth of Ormond standing at his shoulder.

“You’re not real anymore.”

“I’d ask what is reality, but now isn’t the best time to trigger your disassociation. For the sake of this exercise, I’m here. I’m with you, Sherringford.” His voice sounded wool soft, dun and warm. Familiar as Roost’s own bones.

“I’m Rooster now. Roost he calls me.” He looked at him again. Watched him tilt his head, smile.

Ormond smiled and then they were in the Montague Street flat. There was a yellow smiling face on the wall (same), a slipper with his cigarettes inside (same), a dog by the fire (different). Sherringford stood tall, in a suit, his hands steepled as he considered crime scene photos. Roost covered his face, his mouth, his eyes with the rounds of his palms.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Yes. I touched The Thing,” Roost told him and then gagged, he pressed his fingers to his mouth to guard his words. “I touched my part of The Thing and I was in my room, it’s making me see.”

“And then what happened?”

“Is this a nest or a trap?”

“Yoohoo!” Mrs. Hudson said at the door, her hand lifted. Knock, knock, knock. “Who wants a little cake?”

“Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin,” Roost said. His voice was wetter than he wanted it to be.

It couldn’t tell the difference in his voice anyway. It didn’t understand

It threw Mrs. Hudson’s china plate against the wall and screamed and screamed and screamed. The sound a body without a head made. All breath and bellows with no direction.

“None for me thanks,” Sherringford said.

“Friend.” Ormond put a hand on his shoulder, held onto him. “Hurry.”

“I can’t, I never could without you.”

“I’m here, I’m always here.”

“Tim is an arrow, he can’t be lied to, he can’t be confused,” Roost winged.

“It’s just bullheadness, your discernment is better.”

“Davey is fiercer,” Roost tried.

“You’re kinder,” Ormond told him. “You can’t open every door through the bridle or the whip. Sometimes you have to be nice to it.”

“I can’t, don’t make me!”

“Everyone must pay like you must pay. Johnny’s already done this, when he was your father. He did it and he came back again, and that was the whole monster, he took the whole thing and broke its spirit and broke it into pieces. All you must face is a bit of postmortem flinching of the nerves. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“But he had to because he loved us. How can I?” Roost begged.

Ormond laughed. It wasn’t unkind. It was like a giggle, just a few degrees to the left. “Because I’m going to be here, guarding the door. And if you don’t come back and save me I’ll forget all about you, or you’ll forget all about me.”

Roost came alive, snarled. He took two fists of Ormond’s shirt and charged him until his back hit the wall hard enough that Montague street fell away like the sides of a trick box. They stood in the morgue and Roost slammed Ormond so all the drawers sprang open (all but one) and they were all him and all his hearts where gone, cut out, burnt out, ripped out. “Don’t you dare threaten me with death!”

Knock, knock, knock.

“Don’t I mean anything?” (Sherringford! he had screamed when Roost had gone over the Falls. He screamed it and screamed it and screamed it.)

“Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin,” Roost told him. He took a step back and took a step back again. He took hold of the lock of the last unopened slab and he asked nicely. “Please let me find out if I’m the weak link. Please help me help them get home.”

The slab opened. He lay down. Ormond kissed him on the forehead. 

(Mortuary slabs were once made of slate.)

“Keep track of what’s real,” Ormond told him. “I’ll be here at the door.”

The slab was slammed into the dark.

His breath hit the top of the drawer and bounced back on his face, warm and smelling of nothing.

The metal walls vibrated so Roost’s bones rattled in his body.

Knock, knock, knock.

The surprised snap of Roost’s inhale was twinned with the mechanical sound of something on the other side of the door.

There was a jolt, a rush.

C. Auguste Dupin sat in front of the French queen, and Roost sat with him, a shadow moving as he moved and remembering a chance he never had. Surrounded by books at the address 221 in Faubourg Saint-Germain with his English army doctor and his hobby of conundrums. 

The two of them watched the Queen, almost too stunned to apply ratiocination (deduction), she had a way about her of sitting, of standing, of moving that made her seem naked, seem clad in armor (seem ??????). He had seen a parade of Parisian woman full of their own pedigrees and fortunes, but none could have been called Woman more than she. There was a quiet energy about her, like the heat of the sun on a summer’s noon, a grace that made the whole of the room artful by her presence. A sense of knowledge sat upon her shoulder, as though she knew the inner most chambers of the heart. Dupin shook himself from the stunned awe in which he had sat at her entrance with Jean trailing behind her and her attendant plodding along at her shoulder.

“Your Majesty,” John bowed his head, all reverence. Raised as he was under the weight of England’s monarchy he was full of the respect that the French used to hide their bayonets under.

“Please,” she said, pinning back her veil, not even asking after the presence of the Englishman. “Today I am just Irene, just a client. It was my Christian name and I have long missed it.”

“Madame Irene then,” Auguste nodded.

“Someone has stolen some personal letters from me,” Irene said, fingers pressing at a locket at her throat – almost as though protecting it, while her manservant stood quiet and neat at her shoulder. His face had all the characteristic bullheadedness of a Slav, but of a smaller stature, almost doll like in the gentle roundness of his features. His furrowed brow as effective a deterrent as any cutlass.

“Of a personal nature?” Auguste asked.

Irene’s eyes drifted to John.

“He is entirely trustworthy, like your own manservant.”

“Maybe not like him,” Irene said. “Timofei is the surest arrow in my quiver. He has made his efforts, but we are agreed something more is required. Our enemy is slier, like a spider waiting on a great web. He knows that I cannot risk my surest weapon, that I do not dare, and he supposes that I am too ashamed to ask for help likewise.”

“Well, you have come to the very best,” Auguste indicated himself, his piles of books, his piles of wine, his personal historian as John often served.

Timofei snorted. Even that sound was full of Russian staidness.

“That is what I hoped,” Irene smiled. Her hand moved and revealed an image of a great dog, in its mouth the scales of justice. (American make, meticulously kept, commissioned as a gift. Godfrey.)

Roost jolted fully back to himself.

“I hate to interrupt,” he paused, considered the figures stopped in the middle of the conversation. “Actually no, I don’t care, I want to get out of here. Is the gun leaking here? In this memory. Is it broken here?”

“No,” Timofei said, accent thick. “Here it is working, this is the way it was before taken apart, you must go closer to the heart of the thing.”

Knock, knock, knock.

“It’s coming,” he told Timofei. 

The Russian seemed to hunker into himself. Roost liked the word hunker, it was decidedly descriptive and decidedly what Timofei was doing. “If you say it is such.”

Ormond opened the door to the hall, only instead of the hall it was someplace else, a street. His friend peered in, but made no effort to do anything but observe the tableau. “Do you know how to solve the mystery?”

“Maybe,” Roost told him, “I’m not so good at that anymore.”

“Holmes doesn’t think so, he’s often impressed by you. You’ve proven to be a preternaturally gifted student.”

“Yes, well, everyone looks clever the second time around.”

Ormond laughed, almost a giggle.

“Yes, I think I have it solved, at least most of the way. I’d have to make a trip to be sure, but we haven’t time for that.” He crowed a bit at the smile Ormond gave him, full of affection.

“Off you go then, genius, you’ve another riddle to solve.”

Roost strode through the opening, slipping as he went into a neat suit, and an ulster coat that at times was more cape than anything else. Adjusting his scarf, he sped up against the rain up along the walk toward Montague Street that had now grown much longer. (It rained sixteen days on average in London in April.) He should have taken a cab from the start and now he’d have to try to catch a cab looking like a particularly ginger drowned rat. Looking a bit Scottish too, which was sure to work against him.

“Sherringford!” came a voice behind him with all the military focus that meant he was expected to respond. He spun on a heel and there behind him Ormond half hung out of a cab door, holding a newspaper above his head. “Hurry and jump in before the cabbie thinks better of it.”

It took a moment, this wasn’t the warm teddy bear of a man Roost summoned up in the too dark or the too bright of his mind. Not the doorkeeper. This was the Ormond who’d wed once, and now never got to be. Sherringford scampered to the cab, half hip-checking Ormond back into the seat and slamming the door behind them. The cabbie made a face like he was already regretting his charity.

“How did you find me, Dr. Sacker? I’m curious as to your method.” Sherringford smiled at him, trying to be quiet about sloshing off the water in his hair.

Ormond tried not to giggle, but the laughter he was holding back in his throat still illuminated his face. “I’d like to say something clever, like I know you like to walk when you’re on a case, or that you walk at so many kilometers an hour and the distance between here and there is so many kilometers and I just did the math keeping in mind the rate of foot traffic at this date and time, but really I just happened to be passing by.”

“Luck favors those who can’t meet the demands of genius.”

Ormond sniffed, but looked pleased at being teased, his mustache ruffling in its own language. “I suppose if one must choose between the two, luck is better. Either way we’ll get you back to Montague Street in a jiffy.”

“No!” said Sherringford, starting forward so sharply the cabbie tapped the breaks in surprise. He reached out and grabbed Ormond’s hand. He looked at the man, how his face was a little more square, a little longer, his nose a touch wider, his hair a touch darker. The callouses on his hand were slightly different too, the sleek fullness of his moustache, the minute twitches of his face. He wasn’t John in the way that John was John.

He was…

Ormond was dead.

William Sherringford and David Mycroft Holmes had never been born and somehow that meant the universe conspired. That a bird that flew by at just the right moment and a Sacker turned right instead of left and Ormond’s parents never met. Or someone forgot why they had walked into a room and stood there three seconds longer than they had before and Ormond’s parents had sex at two instead of two thirty and different sperm survived the perilous journey, or the Sacker parents stayed in instead of going out and they ended up with a child two years too early and completely skipped having a little squarish army doctor the right year in favor of a little cardiologist the year after. A thousand other butterflies flapped their wings and Ormond had never been.

Sherringford squeezed Ormond’s hand. 

“Let’s drive around, please, just for a little while. I don’t want to go back yet. I’ll pay, double.” He could feel the cabbie paying attention from the front seat.

“Sherringford,” Ormond said in his careful, careful way. He could feel the way the man was HYPER AWARE of the hand curled over his. Could feel the needlepoints of his tensed shoulders and the way he leaned just a little away from the back of the seat and the dip down of his chin – just a hair, but then Sherringford had a count of each hair on Ormond’s head. “This case isn’t getting to you, is it?”

“No, I just– I just want to ride around with you, for a while, in a cab.”

“Holding hands?”

Sherringford’s hand spasmed.

“Holding hands it is then.” He leaned back again, made himself relax, cast an eye sideways at his friend, his flatmate, his partner in crime solving. “Uh, just keep driving us around, cabbie. If you don’t mind.”

“Meters running, I don’t care,” the man shrugged.

He tried closing his eyes, tried just being there, but then he couldn’t see Ormond anymore and a panic overtook him, so he sat quietly, head turned and watched London slip by behind Ormond’s face.

“Hey–”

“You’re my best friend, Ormond Sacker,” Roost told him. “You’re my best friend and I love you and I never told you because I was afraid. I don’t know why, it seems so easy now. To say it now that it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re men from a different age, from a different place, but here we are. In a cab in London at the end of the world.”

“Not the end, not yet,” Ormond said, his hand anchoring Roost’s. “Why are you crying? You know you can tell me what’s wrong. I don’t care what it is, cancer, death in the family, Gladstone ate your phone, I’m here all right? I promised I’d stick by you and I mean it.”

“I have to ask a question and I don’t want to because then I’ll have to say goodbye.”

“You won’t though, Sherringford. Just ask.”

“Is- Is this where it’s broken?”

Ormond smiled at him, it was such a kind smile. “No, Sherringford. It’s not broken here, you’re going to have to go farther down.” 

“Okay,” he said and held Ormond’s hand tight in his. “Okay, we can take more time though, can’t we? More time to–”

There was a tap at the cab window. (A single knuckle, tap ta-tap.) “Roost. John’s relying on you. You have a couple more diagnostics to do and then it’s his turn.”

He turned to look, still holding Ormond’s hand, behind the glass of the door was some kind of Victorian gentleman’s club. The Diogenes, his mind supplied.

“I don’t want to.”

“None of them wanted to, Roost.”

He felt himself wince, felt his head tilt from very far away, turned back in the direction he thought his Ormond was. “Sometimes I want you to be with me so much that I make myself believe that you are and it makes me confused and afraid because I don’t always know what’s real. It’s been so many years, my head full of too many things and too much noise and my feelings have changed. They had too because everything changes and you weren’t there to change with me. I’ve become a different thing, strange and brotherly, and now none of the things I used to wish I could tell you are true anymore except that I love you. Maybe I love you the way people love perfect memories or mountains or stars, or stories. People like stories. But that doesn’t mean I love you any less for keeping me right and giving me an excuse to be good when I didn’t think I was strong enough to be.”

Ormond’s brows knit, the expression familiar. 

“I know that was a lot and you… It’s not reasonable, not being a good friend, but I just–”

“Hey,” Ormond said, voice soft. “You know I am with you, right? Every step of the way. As much as I can be?”

“My one fixed point,” Roost said and wiped away the tears.

“It’s okay, Roost. The detective and his blogger, right?”

Roost nodded once, twice, three times and slipped out the cab door with one, two, three steps onto the soft carpeting.

He heard Ormond, his personal pyschopomp, close the door behind him and sniffed, making himself stand taller, pulling his suit coat straighter. He couldn’t feel his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Ormond said.

“It’s fine, he didn’t really die, did he? He was never really born after all.” He laughed because he didn’t know what else to do. He felt himself disassociating slowly, like someone was peeling him off his body like the plastic cover on a microwave dinner.

His vision was blue and brown and green and orange.

“Roost,” Ormond holding his hand said, voice sharp. “Concentrate. Come back to yourself. What are your senses telling you?”

Five things about Auntie: liked lines, liked hot chocolate, liked the painting of the chicken, liked his future boots, liked it that Godfrey and Irene found each other.

Four things about David: had the alias Bad Davey, had two friends, had a razor under his tongue, had been given the British Underworld.

Three things about Roost: the maned wolf is usually solitary, octopuses’ brain is in their legs, bees dance to talk.

Two things about Johnny: is kind, is angry.

One thing about Dad: loved them.

He’d made it, somehow, through the club and into the back room and into a chair sitting across from Mycroft. Fat, bland faced, and sharp eyed as he sat at the heart of his empire. “You have all the data, you just have to put it together.”

“Ugh,” Roost said,

“Come on, Sherringford,” Mycroft said. “I’m supposed to be the lazy one.”

“I’ve had just about enough of this.”

“I wish you would apply yourself from time to time. You have so much potential, but that is the problem with a promising garden. One can train it up, but shouldn’t interfere too much once the roots are setting in.”

“I’m tired of philosophy,” Roost sniped back at him. “I just want to fix the thing and watch the British Bakeoff with my baby brother.”

“Stop whining, Roost. You’re supposed to be the one brave enough to be vulnerable like this.”

Going still, Roost froze halfway out of his seat. A sort of strange surprise weighted toward dread nestled in between his lung and stomach. “Bad Davey?”

He laughed, resting his hands on his belly. “Took you long enough.”

“But.”

“But what?” Davey smiled at him.

“They were all real.” He sat down again. “They’re all real.”

“We’re all real,” Mycroft said. 

That meant that…

How did he feel about that?

He felt happy?

He couldn’t tell, he was still dizzy from disassociating.

“Are you sure you’re yourself, you seem less…” he didn’t know how to say it.

Davey just laughed. "Less unhappy? I’m not worried about hurting you on accident. I don’t have to be afraid for you. You won’t remember this. I won’t remember this.“

That made Roost feel less happy.

"How do you know?”

“I would have told you about what you’d seen when you went in, told you what to expect. You would have warned John who’s going after me and he had no idea. Or rather she. It was great, she cursed me out for like an hour. Gorgeous moment. I’ll remember it for the rest of however long I have before I’m punted out again." The sharpness went out of his eyes, or perhaps the edge of the blade turned away. "I’m sorry, Sherringford, for what’s coming.”

Roost lost his breath. He clutched at the arms of his chair, his fingers tangling in the afghan Hudson had knit. No. The afghan wasn’t here. It was at 221B. He felt wood and satin and surprise.

“Will it be bad?” As soon as he said it he felt silly. He’d always be a child to Mycroft, to David. He didn’t know how he felt about that, but he felt a swell of affection for his brother.

“No.” His face went quiet, went soft, in a way Roost wasn’t used to seeing in him. “Not bad. Just hard. I’m not a very good brother.”

The pun seemed obvious, but it didn’t feel like the time. “You are though,” Roost told him, trying to be brave again. “You try really hard.”

“Do I?”

He wondered if this was how John felt all the time. Good, powerful. Like his heart was too big and too luminous for his chest. Roost smiled. He wasn’t really good with words anyway. He couldn’t always remember. “Don’t ask me how,” he caved. “It’s too many little things. I’m good with finding them. I’m not so good with putting them together anymore.”

“It’s kind of you to say.”

Roost shrugged. “Next to Dad, you’re the most dangerous thing we know about, and we didn’t know about Dad for a long time. You just wanted to keep me away from the dangerous stuff. You know better now, I think. You’re better now, I think, but you’ve always been good.”

“I hope I do remember that,” Davey smiled, looked like his old self again. Roost liked all the weight this Mycroft had, it made him look huggable. “How many layers have you passed through, how far?”

“I think this is the third, I’m not always good with these sort of things. Space and time. I had a spell in the middle there.”

“I noticed, glad you’re back with us. And none of us are good with this stuff, Roost. That’s our whole thing, we–” His head jerked, chin up, eyes narrowed, as though he’d heard something. “See you later, bruv. For whom does The Thing knock? It knocks for me.”

Roost heard a rustling, and turned to see Ormond holding open the door of a secret passage. He’d have to remember the location. Could he remember the location? Maybe they would remember, maybe Davey just didn’t want to ruin the surprise.

David could take care of himself. He had his own monsters to slay.

Ormond stood at the open panel, his smile like the beginning of something wonderful. “It could be dangerous.”

Roost laughed, because there was nothing else to do. “Well, I suppose then I should go.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greg is on the case, and not ready for the dadding that's about to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited by Caroline who helped as best she could. Some chapters I write and I high five myself - which admittedly is just clapping - but some I’m unsure of when they’re done. So with that grand introduction! Also this chapter is absolutely massive. So. Sorry?

“Well, that was dramatic,” Greg said. If the fortress house and the posh art hadn’t been enough of a hint. The whole setup felt very BBC. All drama and swelling music. He seemed to have taken the little confrontation well, but then Greg felt like he had taken the whole weird other universe pretty well as a whole. He’d already decided he wasn’t going to be too bothered by the situation last night. If they were there for more than a week he’d have a break down. Until then there was no point in panicking when he could be paying attention.

That show of force aside, he liked Bad Davey, liked something about him. Or maybe just felt sympathetic to him somehow. For one thing the kid looked like he’d just gotten over a ten day flu, for another he had the prickly vulnerability Greg had gotten used to in the Holmes brothers ages ago. David sat down at the table again, his hands tight on the chair arms, too tightly buttoned up to flop back down like a teenager. Sherlock looked pale, like a man pushed to the very, very edge of things. That did bother Greg.

Greg still felt like he was floating a bit, had ever since last night, he had put some things together himself. He might be a low hanging fruit, but he was a regular golden plum.

Despite what Sherlock said, Greg wasn’t a DI for nothing. He might miss the sort of things Sherlock stitched together a mystery with, but could still read a room, still could pick things up with a mixture of experience and opening his eyes.

“That’s the only language the idiot knows. Drama,” David’s face seemed to sharpen up into something about twenty years older. “Did he ramble on about our tragic backstories while reclined on a settee with a handkerchief clutched to his bosom?”

“Something like that,” Sherlock said, but he looked like he had to work at it. That was troubling.

The door to the dining room popped open and in marched Timothy Dimmock. Greg had tried to talk to him last night, but the man hid behind that Irene Adler. That woman took special pleasure in her cheek, and under that had the sort of protective streak that could teach a mother bear a thing or two.

“David,” Tim said. The affectionate exasperation in his voice informed Greg all about the relationship between the two of them. Next the man would be telling Davey to eat his fruit and veg.

“Greetings and felicitations, Auntie. I haven’t even killed anyone yet.”

A giant dog bound into the room, its white ears flapping. It tumbled over to John who half stood to block its way to Mary. It pressed its face against John’s chest and huffed.

“H-Hey.”

It let out a high whine.

“Wrong John, sweetheart,” Tim said, patting his thigh. The dog made that tick of movement that trained animals had and trotted over.

“Hello again,” John tried, but Tim just flinched, his shoulder lifting up almost to his ear.

“Are the Nortons still out?” Davey asked, interrupting anything more John might try to say. The whole interaction between John and Tim made Greg sit up and pay attention if only because of how hard Tim was trying not to have an interaction with John.

“You know them,” Tim answered. His hand curled around the head of his giant dog, rubbing its ears while it stared up at him with adoring eyes. “Real Sherlock wants to lead a field trip with the members of the family whose faces won’t get us all killed. Everyone else gets to stay here and eat cake with me.”

That was interesting. Greg would have bet Tim would rather have been on the moon.

“What if we don’t want to eat cake with you?” John asked.

“If you leave the house my brothers’ life will be in danger,” David cut across the conversation again. His hands turned the tablecloth red-pink where they flexed. The plates shivered and clinked against each other. The threat was clear enough that saying anything more would almost be an insult. John and Mary sat up straighter, squaring up somehow. Sherlock leaned forward, his face finally brightening.

Davey turned back toward Tim, wiping off his hands on the white linen serviettes. Greg could practically feel his mother’s ghost rising from the grave in disapproval. No surprise, Tim tutted as well. The man had that look about him like someone who trying to retire from life. Except those moments when Adler or her husband had demanded the man’s attention, or when one of the boys’ got a hair out of place. He’d sit up straight at them like he was their mother then go back to his phone. This Tim looked more adult than the Tim that Greg knew too. Something about this Tim made him seem more comfortable in his own skin if only because his suit actually fit to him. He looked a proper adult, not like he was playing dress up.

Greg wondered where the younger Watsons were. Getting into trouble probably if he knew his own Watsons at all.

Roost Greg had liked almost straight off. The young man had something going on with him, but also had that self-sufficiency that showed he knew what he was about and would stand up for himself if it came to it. He loitered by Greg for a short time, going so far as to shake Greg’s hand and nick his warrant card. Greg had grown so used to that sort of thing, all it really did was make him feel nostalgic as he scolded the young man. Roost just ducked his head, smiling to himself as though he was used to that sort of treatment. It made Greg feel fond of the boy. Reminded him of Sherlock.

Johnny he wasn’t sure of. The boy had a shifty look about him, like he thought he knew better. Seemed the sort of dangerous little bloke who solved problems by acting good and being friendly. Greg had a flatshare with a bloke like that when he was younger, he’d done all the dishes for six months before he’d realized what was happening

They needed to cooperate with this, the whole plan to divide and conquer. He could see it with the same sort of instinct that had helped him survive so long.

Sherlock needed a break, needed to get away from everything, from John, from the last few months. He’d looked on the edge for a while and last night when he’d been with that kid, Johnny, he’d looked something like happy again.

“Sounds like fun,” Greg said. “What are you going to do about the fact that Sherlock and I look like ourselves?”

“Fast talking, pre-planning, and messing with the CCTV,” Tim said. “The Yard liaison will want to keep the trouble to a minimum. Our Sherlock will give her something to tell her superiors if they ask and you’ll just get out of the way before anyone else who might ask more questions shows up.”

“She lets Sherlock do what he wants then?” Mary asked.

Davey let out a laugh, it sounded like silk that had been dragged across concrete.

Tim smiled, it looked like John’s. Sherlock and Mary both jolted where they sat although Mary hid it better. Greg wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t been looking for that sort of thing. “She likes to get the job done.”

“She does,” said Holmes, looming in the doorway like some great, distinguished crane. He looked both more rumpled around the edges and like he’d been honed somehow. He looked, Greg realized, like a father. “I do hope you’re not just going to rip food up, Davey.” He shifted sideways, pulling his phone out to scroll through it. “Seems wasteful.”

Davey narrowed his eyes and shoved a fruit tart into his mouth.

“Charming as ever,” he drawled in the kind of voice that usually got Greg wound up when it came to kids, but Davey just grinned with stuffed cheeks and started filling up his plate with whatever was closest. Some of the tension that had been in him had slid loose somehow, resettled his face.

Holmes’ eyes flicked to Sherlock, looking him over with a sort of casualness that meant he was up to something.

For his part, Sherlock’s jaw went hard, his back straightened.

“Mm,” Holmes allowed and turned to Greg. “Are you ready then, Greg? Or do you prefer Lestrade?”

“Greg is fine.”

“Very good, we should go before John gets anxious waiting and starts improvising.”

“Does he…?” John started then stopped at the sudden weight of eyes upon him.

“Does he what?” Holmes tilted his head forward, just a bit. Greg had never heard him sound so gentle.

“Does he do that often? Start… improvising?”

“He’s a genius with an overinflated sense of his own responsibility. If you don’t give him something to take care of he goes and makes friends.”

Davey coughed out a laugh into his eggs.

 

The ride to the crime scene was in the back of one of Davey’s cars. Holmes muttered about how cabs were better while Johnny just jumped right in and started a conversation with the driver.

“This happen a lot?” Greg asked. 

“What?” Holmes said, his attention squarely on John via pretending he was reading something on his phone.

“Posh car ride around London.”

“Not unless Davey catches us. Cabs are perfectly respectable and reliable forms of transportation.”

“Unless there’s a car already ready,” Johnny said, still half turned in his seat.

“Yes, yes, you have lots of friends. Still, I’d rather not be associated with your brother if I can help it. It’s bad for business.”

“If you say so.”

“Where are we going?” Sherlock asked, his eyes twitching toward Johnny.

“The aquarium! Someone stole a turtle.”

“Take care of a lot of stolen turtles then?” Sherlock asked.

“Turtles are beautiful creatures,” Holmes answered. “We should all try to be more like them. But if you must know, both the Yard and I suspect it has something to do with another case involving murder.”

“Really?” Greg leaned forward. “How?”

“We don’t know yet, but the other person was stabbed to death with a walrus tusk.”

“Sherlock thinks they were stabbed to death with a walrus tusk,” Johnny said.

“They didn’t fall on that tusk, several times.”

“They looked really surprised. And it didn’t feel like a murder.”

“Evidence?”

“I’m not always good with evidence!”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I’ll figure it out.” Johnny rolled his eyes and went back to talking with the driver about puppies. The whole exchange had been quick, almost pointed, but both of them had been loose limbed and smiling during the whole thing. They really were work partners, not so much tossing ideas back and forth as lobbing them at each other, trusting each other to keep up.

That had squashed any other attempts at conversation until they came to a stop at an aquarium. “This is it.” Holmes flipped up his collar. “Everyone out.”

By the time Greg was able to get out, last in the proverbial (or rather the literal) line as he was, everyone was pushing for the police line and he’d had to fall in.

“Holmes,” Sally said, then froze when she saw Greg.

“Donovan,” Holmes said, he could hear the tilt up of the smile in the man’s voice. He pulled up the police line to let Johnny under and nodded for Sherlock to go after the kid. Sherlock bristled a bit at being placed at the kid’s table, but Johnny bounced on his toes a couple times and off Sherlock went to try to observe him as much as he could.

“What?” Sally said again.

“Don’t think about it too much, Donovan,” Holmes grinned, he was loving it.

“Just tell me something, I need something to tell my boss.”

“Your boss is an idiot, that’s what their job is, to be an idiot. If they weren’t you would have been a DI years ago.”

She let out an irritated huff, “Who’s that then at least?” She hovered between wanting to point at Greg and Sherlock and seemed to settle on Sherlock. He did have the greatest potential as an agent of chaos.

“Cousin William, clever lad.” Holmes grinned, a silly thing that illuminated his face.

“Part of the family business,” Johnny added.

“Learning the trade.” 

“Work experience.”

She looked upward. “Fine. Just don’t blow anything up.”

“No promises!” Johnny said and frolicked. He just looked so happy. He bounced off the pavement and bounced off Holmes’ side, turning as he went to watch Holmes face and laugh at what he saw.

Sally turned to him.

He shrugged, shoulders around his ears, “I don’t know if you’d even really want to know the details of the situation?”

She covered her eyes making a sort of growling sigh. “I really, really do. But I guess I also don’t.”

They’d been escorted past three sets of doors down concrete halls, up some metal stairs, and to a platform around a large tank of water. Both Holmes and Sherlock set to poking around with the pocket magnifiers, bumping into each other until Holmes made a sort of growling sound and motioned Johnny over the railing in front of the tank. 

“Oh,” Johnny blinked between them and then down at the railing around the top of the tank, and then at the slow movement of the turtles flapping through the water. “Well, whoever did it was really angry, it was spur of the moment, impulsive. One of the employees, I guess, why he had the sudden impulse I don’t know.”

“There’s no way for you to know that,” Sherlock said. “Transporting a turtle of this size would have taken a lot of planning.”

Johnny’s brows notched, his jaw set. “Because it was one man and he didn’t panic.”

“Don’t look at how he feels,” Holmes said. His voice was slow, patient. He seemed to plant his feet and sink into his roots. “Look at what he did. Let all the residual feelings be a signpost, not the road.”

“Very poetic.”

“I’m a man of many talents.”

“Roost is better at this,” John said like every teenager from the beginning of man. 

“Don’t be lazy, John. I’m not interested in teaching Roost right now.”

Greg had never seen anyone more clearly look like they were sticking their tongue out without actually doing it. He projected the idea of it like a physical presence into the room.

Holmes rolled his eyes, “I’m not going to try to decipher your feelings, you can talk.”

“You’re the worst.”

Holmes grinned.

“Ugh, stop it. Here next to post,” John pressed a thumb under some marks on the railing Greg had to crowd up to see. “Someone was in a hurry. Someone who works here definitely.”

“Reasons.”

“There was an effort to avoid something right below that spot there,” he pointed at a spot below the lip of the platform and right in front of a gate. “Even though from up here, from the way the pulley works, it would have made more sense to pull the giant turtle up where there was a gate. The person showed a care to avoid that spot but a lack of care for the railing. Here, you can see a scrape mark as they pulled the chain back in this direction. Look at that.”

“Very good. Why was he avoiding that spot?” Holmes asked.

“Look in the glass at the far side of the tank.”

Greg and the Sherlocks squinted. “I don’t see anything,” Greg finally said.

“I think I might see something. A… hatch maybe?” Sherlock tried.

John let out a little huff of breath, straightening up into military posture again. “I don’t think it’s a hatch.”

He opened the gate, crouching at the edge of the platform. Holmes moved at a speed Greg hadn’t been able to catch, one pale hand around the back collar of Johnny’s coat. The boy acted with the sort of nonchalance about the hand keeping him from tipping into the water that told Greg a great deal about the sort of father Holmes was. Johnny wiggled his fingers in the water and pulled them back just in time for a pale shape to bob up. A turtle stuck its head up, snapping its mouth at nothing, its eyes cloudy with cataracts.

Johnny went utterly still, his face going blank in a way that turned Greg’s stomach into a stone. It looked like Roost wasn’t the only Watson sibling who had something going on. Alerted by the touch against the back of John’s neck, Holmes moved with a fluid immediacy. One large hand covered Johnny’s eyes, while the other pull him back against his chest. “The turtle’s fine, John. John, it’s okay, it’s not hurt. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But-” John twitched in Holmes’ arms, face still scary blank.

“It’ll be confused, that’s all. John. John, you aren’t the turtle. John, you didn’t hurt it by doing that. You didn’t even touch it.”

“It’s helpless.” 

The way the kid said the word. It made Greg’s knee buckle a little 

“It’s helpless and it thought there was food, but there isn’t.”

Holmes jarred the boy gently, as though he was trying to wake him up. He probably was. “It’s probably a thousand years old and has its own personal chef. It probably has its own personal assistant.” 

“It was an employee who stole the turtle,” Johnny said, trying to talk his way back. “They knew the second one was there, that it was blind. They wanted to keep the blind turtle safe, prevent the two from knocking into each other. They missing turtle, the thief is trying to keep it safe.”

“Yes, John,” Holmes said. “Very good.”

“The turtle stays there because it knows that’s where the food comes from.”

“You’re worried about that old thing,” Holmes said voice steady, steady, steady, almost like a metronome. “It gets first picks. What a spoiled turtle.”

Johnny gave himself a little shake and Holmes was up and on his feet, staring at his phone while Johnny staggered back to them. He was bright pink and wouldn’t look at anyone.

Then there was Sherlock at Johnny’s shoulder, not so much bumping against him as drifting through his personal space.

“The only question now,” Holmes said, “is what he used and why he stole the turtle in the first place.”

“How am I supposed to know that?” Johnny pressed his lips together, pretending like he wasn’t leaning back against Sherlock. “We could look in an inventory? See if there are any conspicuous things missing in the back room?”

“That’s a very good guess,” Holmes allowed.

“If you know the answer, why bother asking me?”

“I’m not asking you for your professional opinion, don’t be lazy and apply yourself. I’ll tell you my deductions later if you work hard.”

“Fine.” John spun on his heal and grabbed hold of Sherlock’s sleeve. “We’ll split up, Cousin William and I will go one way, you and Lestrade there will go the other.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Divide and conquer.”

“Alright, I’m sure you have some sort of plan and I’ll let you get along with it.” 

John nodded, squaring up like a little soldier. “Alright, sync up. We’ll see you at tea time.”

“You don’t need all that time. I’ve already solved it.”

“We’ve got to follow clues,” Johnny said, nodding at Sherlock. “It might take time.”

“Don’t care,” Holmes waved him off, not looking up from his phone.

Popping up on his toes, Johnny made an irritated noise.

“Lunch and dinner.”

“Hmm?” Johnny perked up.

“I expect you to eat both.”

“Ugh.”

“And you’ll be back by ten.”

“Eleven.”

“Good. Ten. It’s agreed.”

“Ugh, I’ll be with you. Sort of,” Johnny nodded at Sherlock who was watching the interaction with open fascination. “He’ll help me reach things on the top shelf or whatever else.”

“Have him back by ten too. And try not to become a nuisance John, I’m not putting up with your whinging if you fall into the Thames again.”

Johnny looked fond for a moment, proud, before darting out the door with Sherlock behind him. His voice trailed after them “Yeah! Sure! Later!”

“He is just a kid,” Greg said, feeling a bit wrong footed. “Wasn’t that a bit… something?”

Holmes actually looked pained, like a parent who was too familiar with their child, as he looked at the empty doorway. “John can’t always discern if he’s in physical danger or why he should stop himself from getting hurt. We have him stuck in a conspiracy of safety, but he still needs to be his own person. Making it a matter of convenience for him to keep himself in one piece gives his brain an idea of what to avoid.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’m always serious when it comes to John,” Sherlock said. “John was trained to be a child soldier, programmed like some robot to fulfill certain tasks. He wasn’t taught to understand or respect care directed toward him, not from those who are supposed to take care of him and not from himself. He only learned it later because his father-” His teeth snapped shut.

“Who am I going to tell, Sherlock?” Greg held out his arms to gesture to the general himness of himself. “I’m not even from this universe.”

“Child operatives, children who are trained up to kill and kill well are generally taught to despise acts of softness, of kindness and to respect harshness, authoritarianism.”

“But Johnny seems so well adjusted.”

“Hamish got him out young. And Hamish was… Hamish was authority, he was inarguable, he was a law of the universe. The very symbol of ability and strength. This old souldier. And he was so kind. I doubted him. Because he wasn’t what I wanted him to be.” His hands flinched upward and Holmes finally looked Greg straight in the eye.

“You’ve been crying,” Greg said, then could have kicked himself. He recognized the way the white of Holmes’ eyes had gone pink, but that didn’t mean he should comment on it. Them being here, all it was doing was ripping these people up. Making them stand in a grief they thought they had climbed past.

Holmes shrugged, seemed to notice the open gate and wandered over to it. His hands seemed steady as he shut it, locked it.

“Who was Hamish then? That turned you into… this. If you don’t mind me asking. Since I probably won’t get another chance?”

Greg could hear the smile in Holmes voice. “He was just a man. A stubborn, grumpy, belligerently optimistic man. He just saw your best potential and then he militarized his faith in you and just- He was just a man. Just my friend.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! Almost done!
> 
> Molly likes for Romantic poets and cutting down on nonsense. And all the Watsons like Molly.

David had called her up and filled the screen of Molly’s tablet, looking like, like something romantic and epic. Something written by a Bronte, or by Lord Byron. Death on the eve of battle, vengeance not to be refused. Someone who had wrestled their way back from the pit, heavy with blood and leaving ruin behind them. Something like a nuclear warhead: probably fine if you whacked him with a wrench, neatly packaged, threat understood. This was the sort of David that the boys hyped but she’d never seen before. She had always assumed it was just little brothers deifying their boss older brother. She bookmarked her copy of Percy and pushed it aside.

He also looked awful. She pushed down her alarm with some mild medical consideration. Too early for influenza, maybe a cold?

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Her heavy stomach bumped against the counter as she leaned in. “You should be in bed.”

He all but pulled a forelock to her, looking regal even with that tick down of his chin. As she watched him, he seemed to fold his temper up and tuck it away again. “Don’t worry, I plan on sleeping this off. It’s just Roost, he’s not feeling so good. He’s all…” He made a vague waving motion that could mean anything. “Johnny would normally see to him, but he has something going on.”

“David, do I need to come over?”

“No!” He jolted on the screen.

“Now you’re worrying me.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

She gave him a look. “If you think it’ll upset me, I’ll come over with Greg once he gets back with the girls.”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” He turned his head and she could see the slash of purple-blue-green under his eyes right before he half-covered his face with his hands.

“Just, nothing’s going on physically. Not really, it’s psychological, just stress and exhaustion. I need to sleep and drink lots of fluids, and I can’t do that with you watching me. You should be resting anyway. Eating chocolate-covered strawberries and reading books by old dead poets who cried about roses and stuff.”

She tried not to laugh, she was being firm and in charge. She was Jane Eyre. Triple Boss. “Sure, why are you calling me then?”

“Speaking of that other thing that John is busy with, some weird stuff happened.”

“Weird stuff like how? Like with stealing dead bodies from my morgue again?”

“That was once,” David said, but without his usual vim. “It was once and it was for a good cause.”

“You never told me what it was for, what you were trying to hide.”

“Hide?” Davey said, shifting his head back and forth like a cobra. “Why would I try to hide anything?”

“Because you stole it from me right after your father was killed.”

“You’ve always said that,” David said, voice gone a little stiff. “You’ve always said killed, like he was murdered, like someone else did it.” He pressed his lips together, looking at her intently. “I’ve always appreciated that. I’ve always trusted you for doing that, you know. There’s another weird Sherlock from another weird universe. We’re not sure what’s happening, but we’re going to fix it. That’s our job now sans W. We just need a place to put weird Sherlock while Johnny goes and runs an errand.”

“You’re joking.” He had to be joking.

“Me? Ha. Ha, ha.” He looked even worse fake laughing.

“You’re not joking.”

“You were always smart, you were always the smartest.”

“Don’t lie,” Molly told him, but she couldn’t help being a little flattered. David just had a way of saying things that just made a person believe him.

“I’m not. You’ve floated on the edges of us for ages and while the elder Holmeses were so busy being excited at the prospect grandchildren they put bags over their heads or so the brothers Holmes who were convinced they’re the pinnacle of everything that they overthink every little strand of hair. You’ve come the closest to figuring out the truth of us.”

“That you talk a lot of nonsense because you don’t have adult supervision?” Molly asked.

“I am adult supervision!” he declared, all but banging his chest.

“You’re something.”

He laughed, the sound raspy with exhaustion and soft with affection. The boys treated her with so much affection she felt crowned, felt true like an arrow, felt Triple Boss. Wondered that no one else had noticed how absolutely spectacular she had always been, she had always been pretty spectacular.

“You were serious. About alternate universe Sherlock.”

“The worst kind of serious.”

“What kind is that?” she asked.

“Actually serious. You know how much I hate to be actually serious.”

“You’re terrible.”

“I’m terrible,” he agreed. “You love me.”

“I love you, but only because Greg needs an adopted son that’s not an unholy terror.”

“I don’t know,” Davey said, resting his chin on his fist. “I can be pretty terrifying. He’s better than the Grandparent Holmes anyway. He reminds me of my real dad. He’s steady.”

“I don’t think we should talk about this anymore,” Molly told him. “I feel like you’re sharing stuff you wouldn’t usually share with me because you’re tired and feeling vulnerable. You’re welcome to talk about it with me if you want, I just don’t think you should right now.”

“Look at you,” David smiled. “No wonder Johnny loves you so much. Always looking out for us. I think Johnny would have liked to live with you, except he was worried about keeping you safe and that he wouldn’t have been able to drag you into half the nonsense he got Sherlock to do. You would have made him work smart. I’ve said too much, haven’t I? I never wanted to make you uncomfortable.”

There was a knock, sharp and patterned, from the front of the house.

“Who’s that rapping at my chamber door?” Molly said, feeling flustered. It took a second for her to roll her center of gravity back up again to waddle toward the entryway.

“I gotta go sleep.”

“Go sleep,” she said agreeably. “Rest.”

On the other side of the glass panel on the door was a tall shape and shorter stockier person with a distinctive posture and characteristic sticking out ears.

“Outies!” David said, and her screen went dark. 

She sighed, folding her tablet up to slide into her pocket.

There on the other side of the door was Johnny, looking apologetic, and a Sherlock that looked like he was still in his early thirties.

“You’re pregnant,” Young Sherlock said.

“Sorry about this,” Johnny said, holding a bulk bag of cat treats. Organic! Real fish! the bag said in about size twenty font. Where had he found a bag so large?

“You better get in here,” she told him stepping inside. “This isn’t another weird clone thing, or aliens or something?”

“No,” Johnny said, leading the way in. “No Doctor Who stuff. Well, some Doctor Who stuff. We’re not sure, we’re figuring it out.”

Young Sherlock took a step into the entryway and went stiff when she gently pushed him out of the way of the door.

“Why are you figuring things out here?” she asked.

“Because I’ve got something I need to do and Tim and Davey both need time to themselves. He has to go somewhere safe, and there’s no one else I trust more to make sure he doesn’t get into trouble than with you and Greg. If anyone could keep Sherlock from performing general mayhem it’s the two of you.”

“You and Greg?” Sherlock said at a pitch Molly usually associated with baby birds.

“If he’s too much trouble, I’ll find someone else. I’ll think of something,” Johnny said with his usual Very Serious face. She tried not to show how Very Cute it was.

She turned to Young Sherlock, giving him a quick look over and put her hands on her hips. “You’ve been using.”

“No,” he tried.

Johnny hauled back and punched Sherlock so hard he stumbled.

“Johnny,” she scolded him. “No hitting in the house.”

“Yes, Molly,” he nodded, looking cherubic. Like he wouldn’t do it again as soon as he and his brothers were all sitting on her sofa. He turned to Sherlock and held up a finger. “No lying to Molly ever. Molly asks a question and you answer honestly. It’s A Rule.” As if he hadn’t spent the first months of their acquaintance blatantly lying to her.

“What is your muscle development?” Sherlock asked Johnny, rubbing his arm and looking that familiar mixed of shocked and fascinated Molly associated with new parent Sherlock. “I hope you aren’t planning on doing that again.”

Johnny actually looked guilty. “I am sorry about that. I’m used to punching my brothers. Roost is built like a tank and Davey always wears a vest so it always hurts me more than it hurts them. I didn’t actually hurt you, did I? I really didn’t mean to.”

“I’d hate to see how you’d hit if you did.”

“We’ll get you home by then,” Johnny told him, patting him consolingly on the arm. “I have an ice pack in my bag if you need it?”

Sherlock pulled up to full height. “Of course I don’t need an ice pack.”

“Oh. Okay then.” Johnny looked awkwardly between the Molly and Sherlock for a moment until she sighed and opened her arms.

“Come on then. Give me a hug and go beat the Daleks.”

His arms wrapped around her from the side, his body trying to tuck against hers, going soft for a moment with a relief that made him seem very young. Poor thing, only fifteen. She smoothed a thumb against his cowlick and gave him a little squeeze. He made a soft happy sound and then darted away like he was afraid even all these years later he might get in trouble for love freely given. “Okay good,” he said quickly and darted out her door.

“Well,” Molly said, looking at Sherlock.

“Well,” Sherlock said, looking back.

“So,” Molly said. “Alternate universe Sherlock. How have things been for you?”

Maybe Johnny shouldn’t have made such a point about Sherlock being honest. 

Half an hour later she had her feet up on an ottoman while Sherlock pacing back and forth telling her his life story from meeting Greg at the Yard to his return from his very short plane ride. It was a long story. She felt for him, for his suffering, his anguish had been sharpened by his confusion at why things couldn’t go the way that had before. What had he done wrong? In the past she may have cooed at him and given his hand a pat, now she saw how little good it did either of them. He wasn’t a child, if he asked for advice he was going to get it.

“Have you ever considered involving John in your decision?” Molly asked. She remembered her old crush the way one might remember an A-level, how important it had seemed at the time and how distant it had seemed now. But comparing that to the warm, bubbling, adoration she had for Greg, the way she felt like she begun to glow internally whenever she saw Greg’s lovely face, it seemed adolescent. No offence to herself, but what had she been thinking? It was clear they simply wouldn’t suit. People changed she supposed. She certainly had. Love made one blind and all that. Byron was certainly proof enough: great poet, hot mess.

“I did!” Young Sherlock paced across her living room. “My decision was entirely based on him! Could I keep him safe? How long? How good of an actor was he? How reliably could I fake his death?”

“No, you considered how he could be convenient for you because you were used to thinking of him as convenient.”

“I- No, I’m not.”

“If your John is anything like our Johnny, then the reason he’s so angry with you is because he believed in you. He let himself be of use to you because he trusted you.”

Sherlock’s eyes were big and pale in his face.

“Maybe you should try to listen to him,” she told him. “If you wanted to maybe change things.”

“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” he told her.

“The truth is often hard to hear. You can fix things, things like this are easy to fix if you’re willing to make the first move, willing to show that you’re prepared to make yourself vulnerable.”

Before Sherlock could answer there was a frantic series of knocks at the front door getting louder and louder.

“Help me up,” Molly told him, lifting a hand. “Somebody’s at the door.”

Somebody turned out to be Roost with huge panicked eyes and Johnny carried in his arms. Johnny looked awful, and by awful Molly meant specifically he looked unconscious. She darted into action, taking his pulse and checking his eyes. 

“Bring him into the living room, what happened?”

“I got scared,” Roost said, eyes darting away, cagey as anything. “I checked him over. I didn’t forget. I just got scared.”  
Molly pressed her lips together to keep in the immediate response and moved out of the young man’s way. Hormones made things feel strange. Sometimes things were hyperreal, ultra-sensory, so it seemed she could taste her own mouth, feel her own skin, so everything but Greg’s steady hands on her shoulders made her feel overstimulated and frustrated. Sometimes they made her feel disconnected and floating. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling now, like there was some kind of symphony floating through her, reedy panic, the low hum of muscle memory, the percussive patter of her mental list taking form. She felt a bit like she’d been floating from conversation to conversation since Davey had called her and the shock of the whole thing snapped her into movement.

In the living room, Roost had arranged himself in the corner of her sofa, with Johnny’s head supported in his lap. On further inspection Johnny looked less unconscious that in deep sleep from exhaustion. Roost’s pale hand curled over Johnny’s crumpled brow and held him close as his body gave fitful shivers. When Sherlock tried to come near them he almost crawled backward up the wall.

“It’s okay, Roost,” Molly used in the same voice she used with the parents and spouses who came in to identify their loved ones. Eyes cloudy with distress drifted back toward her. He let her approach, let her smooth down his hair, let her take Johnny’s pulse. Too fast, thin and fluttery. She didn’t have anything to check his blood pressure, but she could bet it was low. Johnny’s skin felt tacky from drying sweat and was passing into clammy. “He’s going into shock.”

“Body heat,” Roost said. “Touching. It will fix him if I stay here and be his big brother.”

“Roost,” she said again, this time involuntary. “He needs to go to hospital. Did he eat anything weird? Take anything strange? Medication, something like that?”

“It’s not an allergic reaction, its hypovolemic. His body is really strong, but there are limits to what it can take.”

“What happened, I need to tell emergency services.”

Roost looked between the two of them and made an observable decision not to care. “Grendel, the man who wanted to change us, had this idea. This machine. John calls it a gun, but it is only as much as you point it at someone and it does something to them. The same could be said for words or bright lights and those things aren’t guns.”

“This wasn’t a word,” Sherlock said.

“I understand what you mean,” Roost told him, eyes and voice drifting over an invisible landscape. “That doesn’t mean you’re not wrong. Grendel wanted to go back, he wanted Before, and when he couldn’t get that he decided he’d settle for different. Johnny could tell it better, I don’t remember much about what I was like before.” His eyes darted away for a second and then back to his brother’s face.

“Roost,” Molly said. “Time.”

“Yes, Johnny could tell it better, but it makes Johnny sad. It makes him the most sad because he was closest to what he wanted when Grendel had him and then didn’t have him and then had him again, and probably always had him. Some people are like that. They always have you until you can get someone bigger to have you. Like Daddy, Daddy was the biggest, he was so big The Thing choked and then it broked and then stuff happened.”

It felt like Roost was telling them exactly what happened in the truest sense, but also that without the context behind that truth it was practically meaningless. “What did your dad do with the gun, Roost?” Molly asked, the back of her hand pressed against Johnny’s forehead.

“He did something to it, he made his mind go inside and it moved him around, but he loved us, he was our dad.” Roost swallowed, pressed his cheek to Johnny’s forehead. “It tried to change him, but instead he loved us and broke it apart inside. John has done this twice. Someone had to do it, and he’s just like Dad almost exactly and so we thought it would be okay. He did it twice and even though he won both times I think it hurt him real bad.”

“Has he had a seizure?” Molly asked, already pulling out her phone.

“No,” Roost told them. “He just came out of it and looked real sad threw up and fainted and then I brought him here. I got real scared, but Johnny left me a list of things to do in case it went wrong, even seizures, but he hasn’t had any. Even bleeding ears, but he hasn’t had any.”

“Why would he be worried about his spine?” Molly asked.

“It’s okay if you call the hospital,” Roost told her. “Johnny wouldn’t like it, but he’s real sick and I’m scared and want him to be healthy and safe. Sometimes Johnny thinks it’s okay for him to be hurt, but I don’t think so, and what I want is important too, isn’t it? Ormond wouldn’t want me to be scared.”

“Who’s Ormond?”

Roost froze, eyes going even more unfocused. “Did I say that? I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Just stay here,” Molly told him, kissed him on the forehead as she stood, her phone at her ear. She’d made this sort of call for her father enough times she knew how to do it. It was second nature. She stood at the doorway to watch young Sherlock seated on the coffee table, bent toward Roost. She forgot sometimes that Roost was in his twenties now. In this moment he looked it, face serious.

“We don’t have a fifth anymore,” Roost told Sherlock. “Dad died and now there’s only four of us. We just hoped nothing bad would happen.”

“Where’s the last piece?” Sherlock asked him.

“Dad didn’t tell me, I didn’t want to know,” Roost blinked up at him. “Dad hid it somewhere. I mean he didn’t, but he told one of the others where to hide it.”

“You don’t know wh-”

“You figure it out,” Roost snapped. “My brother’s sick. I’ve just had the third worst day of my life. You don’t matter to me right now.”

“Sorry,” Sherlock said, pulling back. “I’m sorry.”

“Is everything alright?” Molly asked.

“Yes,” Sherlock told her, standing up. “If you don’t mind I’m going to get out of the way. It looks like the three of you have enough to worry about.”

“Aren’t you staying here?” Molly raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t think that’s wise,” Sherlock stood up with his hands in his pockets, looking pale and tightly strung, looking young and lost.

Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. “Just do what you need to do. Greg will be back in the evening if you want to come back here. I have to go take care of the kids now, so do what you have to do.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Wee Doctor as a fanwork. I’ve loved your likes and reblogs, your kudos and comments, fan essays and encouragement, your tweets and your amazing art. I love all of you and I hope this last foray into Wee Doctor was as good a gift as it felt for me to get 1000 followers. So here it is, the thrilling conclusion!
> 
> Thursday gets meta, things get mental, and Sherlock gets something out of the experience.
> 
> Words: 4788 (I know, right?)

Sherlock waited in a convenient mausoleum until it was dark, then grabbed his shovel. He hoped his assumptions were correct, if they weren’t this could become a bit messy. He’d considered what he’d seen of the Watson family, what little Roost had told him of this not-a-gun, and his own knowledge of John. Tried to apply it to this Johnny, who already looked too used to knowing too much and not mentioning it out of politeness, with the same kindly exasperation of Sherlock’s John. Sherlock had looked at Bad Davey with his perfect suit and his suffering eyes tinted pink from crying. Sherlock recognized the look in Davey’s eyes what had been lately staring back at him in the mirror, Johnny would have too.

So the question wasn’t where would Davey hide the thing, but where would Johnny put it. That was what the boy had wanted to talk to him about after coming back from his little errand. Being the fifth. W had been the fifth and now John had needed someone he could rely on, someone who was curious enough to do the unrecommendable. 

So Sherlock stood at the foot of the grave bearing the name of J Hamish Watson (Father, Brother, Friend) and admired the tactical position. It had Davey written all over it. Up on a hill, complete visibility of the area, and a convenient mausoleum to hide in if it came to it. He shone the light in a broad sweep, only one gravestone in the sight of Hamish faced the wrong direction. When he got to it the other side was blank as well, like there had been some clerical error. Or like it was a cold shoulder, a final forgetting. -

This was it.

He set his coat aside and got to work. Digging was hard work alone, and it took forever. He would have liked to do this with Molly. The older, wider, more authoritative Molly who directed him and the Watsons with equal familiarity. This Molly, he suspected, would have found the whole thing funny. Maybe not funny, maybe just interesting. The sort of thing a person familiar with the history and culture of her profession, her art, would appreciate. Alone, the digging took until he become concerned about the sun rising and getting caught. He’d had the vague sense of hitting something early on, the shock of metal jangling against metal, but it had been as momentary as a flash of lightning and once the vertigo had passed nothing had been there. He checked his watch, it was almost half past two. He looked up toward the sky. The hole was so far up it was a tiny rectangle, he could block it with his raised thumb. He stared at it and took a moment to discern if he was high. He looked at his watch. It was 2:21. Probably not him then.

Rooster and Johnny had both implied the not-gun did something to the mind, was this it? The fantastical clinging to the familiar.

“This level of hallucination implies a level of intelligence,” he said. “Someone is watching me. Friend or foe?”

He considered the silence. The hole smelled of rich earth, but the hole wasn’t as dark as it should have been. He didn’t feel in danger, but then his sense of danger wasn’t the best.

“I don’t know what to do about that. I only agreed because I was curious and I wanted answers.”

The wall in front of him shivered and there stood the door to 221B, brass numbers and hanger at a tilt. John had been here. Well, he thought, that was as much of an invitation as he was going to get. 

On the other side of the door a tableau was set up. 221B, almost. There was a plaid blanket he didn’t recognize over John’s chair, and a finely combed neatness to the flat. As if it had been too carefully arranged into itself, into a home. A facsimile of him and John sat side by side, their heads together, Johnny leaning against this tableau Sherlock’s other side - tucked under his arm. Beyond them where the hall should be rose a vault door, studded and chained like something out of John’s ridiculous films. It might as well have been a challenge.

A sense of deep dread rushed over him as he reached toward the chained door. There was a shift on the sofa, a shuffle of wool and upholstery. Sherlock reached out a hand toward the door as a roar of sound reverberated through it in a wave he felt down to his bones, so loud his knees went out from under him and his teeth knocked against each other. A knot of terror tied itself in his chest as he curled up, tried to protect his head with his arms. The chains held for now, but how long could they hold against something that powerful, something that could make that sort of sound?

Someone on the sofa shifted. The sound from behind the door went abruptly silent.

“Careful of that,” said someone, with John’s familiar humor. Sherlock opened an eye.

The man on the sofa watched Sherlock, his face burned inside out somehow. Sherlock sank into his eyes the way a stone sank into the ocean. He felt at once satisfied and a curious. The weighted pull between those two extremes left him feeling spread thin over too much emotional space. The weight of that gaze drove Sherlock back from the sofa, the little family, into his chair. 

This wasn’t John. This couldn’t have been John.

He scrunched his eyes shut as everything tilted.

The man that wasn’t John sat in John’s chair and folded John’s hands and leaned forward with John’s body. The gravity of the whole room shifted, the air grew warmer, that flash of heat like getting into a hot garden shed on a hot day. It felt like sitting at the edge of a great abyss. A conversation without words. Sherlock covered his eyes.

“I don’t want to look,” Sherlock whispered.

“You’re going to have to, Sherlock,” the man told him.

The man’s voice rolled over Sherlock like the waves of the shore, like the waves against the side of a pirate ship floating and moving and rolling in its orbit like some planet.

“I thought you had deleted the solar system,” the man said.

Behind Sherlock’s eyes worlds shifted. “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem?”

“No,” the man said. “The center will hold. The gyre will tighten. I’ll make it. There’s hook and there’s crook and there’s always a third choice.”

Sherlock turned his head. The other Sherlock sat alone now, no, not alone. His hand rested on the top of little John’s head. The boy looking younger than the one that had been at the house. He’d say seven, except for his nose, eight then and almost nine. This Johnny was a memory. Johnny looked at him with his father’s eyes, but the demand felt more immediate. Other Sherlock tilted his head down to rest for a moment against the soft fluff of the boy’s hair. Murmuring to the boy back to sleep. There was take out on the table and a stack of DVDs. The other Sherlock smiled, the expression soft, tired. Kind. That was a memory too. Sherlock didn’t know if he was kind like that. That he had that potential. To be kind.

The boy slumped back into the other Sherlock’s shoulder, sleeping even deeper now and Sherlock’s mouth ticked up at the corner, gentle, as he got out his phone.

“What’s behind the door?” Sherlock asked.

“I thought you’d want to talk.” Watson’s amusement warmed him like sunlight on a cold day. Sherlock looked back at him, at the smile lines around his eyes and the grief bracketing his mouth.

“I’m getting down to business.”

Watson laughed. It was a tired sound, belligerently hopeful and worn in like old shoes. “That’s you all right, business.”

“I was told I needed to find where the gun was leaking to get back home.”

“Why do you always want to leave?” Watson asked, the humor leaving his face.

“I’m not your Sherlock, you’re not my John. We don’t belong here.” He stopped to swallow, resettle himself. “I owe it to my John to get him back home where he belongs.”

“You owe him because you left him?” Watson asked.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Watson tried to smile.

“You left him in this world.”

“I had to choose one, one or the other.”

“Why did there have to be one or the other?” Sherlock asked. “Wasn’t there a third choice?”

“Very good, Sherlock, always were a fast learner. Nice try, but this isn’t about me, not for you. Why did your John chose her over you, you mean?”

Sherlock looked at the man’s eyes again and winced back, his mind pulling away from what he saw. Too much, too much everything and he saw it all at once. This wasn’t John, or Hamish, it was just-

“It’s alright,” the man said. “It’s harder without a psychopomp. Just ride the gyre again, it’ll get easier.”

Sherlock relaxed and he was back in 221B. His 221B, the familiar one, the one with the labeled shelf for experiments and the neat sitting room.

Hamish tilted his head. “There you are. You were always a hung up about these sorts of things.”

“What things?” Sherlock snapped.

“Names. What they mean, what they are. Still, well done.”

Sherlock blinked at him. He looked a great deal more like John if one were willing to ignore how big he looked under his skin. Sherlock leaned forward to get a good look at him, but all he could see was !!!, !!!!!!!, !!!!!, over and over again “How are you still alive?”

Hamish threw his head back and laughed, delighted. “Didn’t you hear? Hamish Watson, W, the great and powerful is dead. He helped his brother destroy the gun and then he jumped off the roof of St Bart’s. Did they really put the last part of the gun in Grendel’s false grave? How poetic. Was there anything buried there, other than the obvious? David said he’d take care of Grendel’s body when he took care of mine.” He made a face. “Not at the same time obviously.”

“Your body was taken advantage of enough while you lived. They would have kept the two of you far apart. I assume one of the boys destroyed your body out of respect for you?”

Hamish laughed again as if Sherlock had said something clever, something wonderful. “Of course. Bad Davey. He’s very sweet.”

“He’s cruel.”

“He’s practical. He never lets himself get pinned in, there’s always another option you know. With people especially.” Hamish’s composure almost slipped, but his expression turned just in time.

“You care about him a lot,” Sherlock said.

“A father loves all his children.”

“He’s like you,” Sherlock told him.

Hamish just smiled. Sherlock wondered how the smile was constructed.

“You knew I wasn’t your Sherlock.”

“I figured that when you didn’t immediately start asking about John. The poor man has an obsessive approach to parenting. Keeps John on his toes, otherwise the boy will try to be the grown up.” Hamish turned to the tableau of his son and his… Sherlock? “I need Johnny to be able to be a child. To start again fresh. Young enough to be remade.”

“How did you deal with it? Taking care of him?”

Hamish gave him an annoyed look. “I don’t know Sherlock, I’m a conglomeration of the captured memories of a dead man filtered through your personal experiences and expectations. You’re dreaming up a magic person to tell you things you can’t know. You’re lucky you’re getting full sentences.”

“You do remember a little bit though.”

“If I hadn’t I would have let the door open.”

“What’s on the other side?” Sherlock asked.

“Alright,” Hamish gave him the sort of look that spoke all too knowing volumes. “If you want me to admit it, I remember a lot.”

“What are you then?” Sherlock leaned forward again so he barely hovered on his chair.

“Human, just human. Dead. A tall shadow on a short man. Pick the best of the three to get what you want. What does it matter? All this, it is what it is.”

“It matters to me.” Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “I want to know what I can ask you.”

“Anything you want.”

Sherlock growled, John raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t understand you and Sherlock. You weren’t co-parents in the usual sense. What were you?”

Hamish burst out a sound, a laugh, a sob. Sherlock couldn’t tell. It echoed, as if Hamish was really very big and had just been tucked down very small to fit. “Anything. We could have been anything I wanted. Didn’t they tell you what I do?”

“Empathy weaponized.”

“Not on purpose.” Hamish leaned forward, his hands on Sherlock’s. His eyes were black and blue and dark like a bruise. “It’s not on purpose. I just see people and understand them. And I want them to be something, do something, and they just- They’d do anything I wanted. If I want them to be helpful, or be angry, or kill themselves.”

“Or love you,” Sherlock said.

Hamish covered his own mouth with both hands, his head bowed. The noise he made was supernatural, subhuman. An anguish which set off from his diaphragm, caught sail with the air caught in the bottom of his lungs, and surged forward on a whole sea of grief. Time and measures felt set off, everything too early, too late. Everything out of step. And that sound, the worst of all. 

“Even love me,” Hamish finally agreed. “Except Tim, Tim’s too stubborn, he loves me out of pugnaciousness.” 

If Sherlock ever needed to be strong, to keep John safe, and the way was hard or terrible or awful, if that happened he’d remember Hamish’s bowed head. Remember its vulnerability. Remember the soft dip from neck to skull. 

“People aren’t.” Hamish gasped in air, the sound fibrous and gory. Sherlock could hear the tack of the blood on the man’s lips. “People aren’t things. They aren’t boxes to unlock, secrets to expose. I couldn’t do that to Sherlock. Couldn’t- People aren’t things, I just wanted people to stop being things and start over. Give myself time to learn how to control whatever this is. And Sherlock. He was someone I can focus on, someone alive. I wanted to- I wanted a friend. I had no one. No one but Tim who’s always had one foot in some other family. He collects them you know, I was just another one.”

Sherlock blinked. He gasped in breath, his vertigo spreading out from the inward curl of his shoulders. A dizziness that Sherlock seemed to catch from the bend of Hamish’s body. That he could feel as if it were his own, was it his own? It must be.

“I just wanted Sherlock to be my friend. I’m just human. I thought if we were friends it would be okay. But. When a man is a father it’s different. And it was a relief. It was just a relief to be done and bury myself.”

“What about Sherlock? You could have relied on him.”

“I tried.”

“You sent me away,” said Johnny from the sofa. “You sent me away. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I did wrong.”

“I was so helpless,” Hamish said into his hands, as if he was finishing his son’s thought. His voice was tiny enough to fit in Sherlock’s hand, tiny enough he could close a fist and hide it. “I was so helpless and small. If it hadn’t been for Tim… I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t been for Tim.”

There was so much suffering in Hamish’s voice. So much gratitude conjoined with anger simmered down to pain.

“That’s all I wanted. A friend I could belong with. A friend who would be separate, complimentary,” Sherlock felt out the words, spoke them for Hamish.

It was hard for Sherlock to believe in kindness when he saw people’s vices on their sleeves and upper lip and the way they tied their shoes. Hamish though. The thought of even accidentally treading on Sherlock’s consent wracked him with torment. Filled him with anguish.

Sherlock believed him. That something had happened and his empathy had surged out of his control. That slipping up terrified him, the way it would have become easier and easier. The path of least resistance. The line would have kept blurring. He could never have been sure.

Sherlock would have to prove his agency constantly, but he had neither the personality nor predilection for that sort of long term consistent check pointing. Sherlock liked romanticism in his philosophy and pragmatism in his routine, as long as he was satisfied he wouldn’t disturb a working model. He would bend in ways that had nothing to do with petri dishes in the refrigerator and everything to do with his life slowly rotating around Hamish.

Sherlock remembered the hollow-eyed man calmly talking about how right and correct it was for a man to pull out his own teeth and swallow them like so many bitter pills. That was what Hamish had tried to protect his Sherlock from. The worst kind of yes sir. The kind that Sherlock would find comfort in as he plasticized by increments. Until Hamish had killed him.

Had anyone ever loved Sherlock that much in his life? Loved him so much they would refused to risk dehumanizing him? Denied themselves to avoid overwhelming Sherlock, controlling him in the way Sherlock had shown he detested in a thousand little ways.

Maybe someone already did.

Maybe they already were.

“Oh,” Sherlock said. Then a sick feeling hit his stomach.

“What a clever boy,” Hamish told him. They were sitting in the Diogenes, Hamish was in Mycroft’s chair. (The door back out to the lobby was the door with the chains on it.) He tilted his head at Sherlock. Smiled. It went all the way into his eyes in a way Sherlock hadn’t seen in a long time. 

“You were faking.”

“Come on, detective, you can do better than that.” He traced words in the air with his finger over the clouds of !!!, hand scrawled and bright white.

“You were… helping?”

Hamish blinked, looked away, there was a blur and shudder to him like old film played too fast.

“You’re dying.”

“I told a truth to help you see the truth. You wanted to know why he chose her over you, you wanted to know why he was so furious.”

“Because he was giving me space, he knew I’m not good with… people and he let me chose. But then I didn’t even give him a chance to chose.”

“I want you to be happy,” Hamish closed his eyes, turned his head so he was in profile. “You made me so happy. Watching you at crime scenes. You’re so curious. And you keep trying. Even when you’re pretending you’re not scared. Even when you’re pretending you’re not lonely. The work! The game! It’s when you’re at your best. And then you took care of John. The boys needed a stable point, something fixed, but every fixed point needs to be fixed to something.” He breathed out. Pain scrawled out in chalk over his breath. Tremor appeared over his hand. “And you need to let go, you need to let yourself be happy with them, with him. You can’t go back. ”

“You say that like you have personal experience,” Sherlock said. “Roost told me Grendel wanted to go back to something, what was it?”

“I think for him it was freedom. That if he could just kill you, destroy you, he would be free.”

“Who was he?”

“He was a lot of things. His name was Doyle. He knew you once, a version of you, some versions of you. Something changed, he believed you trapped him. If he could destroy you and go back, scrap you like a bad draft and start all over again, then everything would be fine. ”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No.”

“And he couldn’t.”

“No.”

“The story you’re letting the others believe about you isn’t true.”

“Of course not,” Hamish said. “It’s not just my story and I’m a father and a brother first. That’s the way of things. Besides, Doyle died long ago. Ages before Grendel became Grendel.”

“How did you keep him from killing me then?” Sherlock asked. His hands curled over the vulnerability of his belly, his heels pulled close to his body.

“I told your story. You were too well loved,” Hamish told him.

He stared at Hamish.

Hamish stared back.

“That’s it?”

As Hamish turned his head to look away there was a cascade of images that finally settled back into himself. “You gave me everything I could ever, ever have wanted. A chance to be close to someone without hurting them. A third choice. So yes, that’s it. You were loved too well to die.”

“And you weren’t?”

“I was tired, Sherlock. I’ve been fighting Doyle for years with words and sympathy. Struggling to get one more word on the page of your life, one more line. I held out until others could take over.”

“Your family,” Sherlock said.

“Your family. Your friends. I almost died myself more than once. I went to dark places. He had a terrible memory for people and facts, he’d make a mess and I’d have to wade through it. Married or not married? Orphan or parents? He made more than a few mistakes that had to be cleaned up.”

“You’re not real at all, are you? You’re just a convenient face.”

Hamish looked at him.

“You know, they tried to catch Jack the Ripper once by shining a light through the lens of the eye of one of his victims. They thought the last thing a person saw would be trapped there,” Sherlock told him.

“Did it work?”

“How long do you have until you’re gone?”

“Not long now. I’m not sure how that translates to real time. But I can feel it,” he wiggled his fingers. “The border of memory.”

“Then help me before you go. We were brought here from another universe. Your sons told me a part of the gun is leaking.”

“It’s here. I trapped what’s left of Grendel here. He became the door the Big Bad Wolf keeps huffing and puffing against. I had to contain the part of him that didn’t self-destruct on the roof.”

“What will happen when you disappear then, it’ll break out again?”

“Something like that. I don’t know. As I weaken so do the walls keeping it in, the energy bleed is helping The Thing keep from burning up what’s left of Grendel. I can guess based on what I learn, I can’t begin to imagine how it would unravel in your world where my boys aren’t there to apply pressure. To keep order.”

“To keep the third option.”

“Very good, Sherlock.” Hamish looked nearly heartbroken. “Always a quick study. Out of your siblings you were always the one closest to me.”

“Then help me.”

“What should I do, Sherlock?” Hamish asked. “You decide.”

“I don’t want to,” Sherlock said, stomped his foot, felt eight. Felt younger. Felt the tide on his shoes. Felt the blue of the ocean. The pirate ship on an infinity of sea, a planet cushioned along its starry orbit. “You already know what needs to be done, why can’t you tell me the answer?”

“Because it’s not something I can ask you.”

“How long will you be here?” Sherlock asked.

“I’m not really here, Sherlock. I’m just a man at a door, holding it closed. A shadow of a man.”

“Holding the door closed on a hole in time and space? That’s quite the shadow.”

“I was quite the man,” Hamish told him, closed his eyes. They fell back into the embrace of 221B. A shadow Sherlock snoozed next to Hamish on the sofa. The smell of tea and tomato sauce filled the air. Some details were sloppy, others meticulous beyond realism. Sherlock watched them from his chair.

The man – the other Sherlock - looked warm, luminous, happy. 

“What would happen if you left suddenly instead of fading slowly?”

Hamish opened his eyes and rested his head on the false Sherlock’s shoulder. The Sherlock sighed and started scrolling through his phone.

“What would happen if you and the door and the walls disappeared all at once? Would the thing destroy what’s left of Grendel? Would it destroy its own door in?”

Hamish took a ragged breath in, then out.

Sherlock stared past him. “I have to take you out with me. I have to pull you into my head and leave with you, quick enough the gun will devour itself before it realizes.”

“I’m sorry. Whatever you chose, I trust you, trust you to be strong, to be good, to make your own choices and have a reason for them,” Hamish whispered.

“But it’ll work,” Sherlock clarified. “Carrying you out inside me will work. If you’ll help me.”

“He’ll always help you,” the Other Sherlock told him as one might tell the family of a dying man. “All he’s ever wanted is to help you. But you’ll have to be brave.”

“I’m known for my bravery,” Sherlock told him.

The pretend Sherlock shifted, changed. There was a sharpness to his features that was unreal, a Sherlock boiled down to bone and shadow and too high cheekbones. “You won’t remember.”

“What won’t I remember?” he asked.

“This, this whole thing,” Hamish told him. Waved his hand through the air like a monarch, 221B rippled. “Coming here, seeing it. Once I’ve dissipated you’ll forget this ever happened. Self-defense you know. Your brain will rewrite it into something else.”

“It’ll be totally gone?” Sherlock breathed out.

“Nothing totally leaves organic matter,” Hamish assured him.

Sherlock let out a breath of epiphany, his hands coming together in front of him. When he leaned back it was against a mast, Baker Street disappearing in the wake of a pirate ship. “You’ll change my brain, you’ll leave a footprint of yourself. I’ll be more like you, less like me.”

“That’s why I couldn’t ask, you had to choose. Do you feel the tide?” Hamish looked out at the sea, hands tight on the railing, his face tense. The phantom Sherlock had left them. It was only the two of them now.

“Take my hand, Hamish.” Sherlock reached out. “I’ve made my choice.”

Hamish’s hand was dry, strong, controlled. “It’s okay, right? It’s not really me.” He closed his eyes, breathed in deep. “I’ve already escaped. I’m not really dying, right?”

Sherlock clasped Hamish’s hand tight in his. “You must let go.”

“I want to,” Hamish sobbed. “He wants to have me. My children.”

“John’s Sherlock is taking care of them. Let me take care of you. Help me be strong.” Where their hands touched there was a shock, a burn.

“I’m alone,” Hamish’s voice cracked. “I’ve been so alone.”

Sherlock took him into his arms. “So have I. Hold tight to me. Hold tight.”

“I love you,” Hamish told him, arms set round him like a universal law.

Sherlock tried to hold on just as sure, tried to be just as brave. There was a roar of rage over the horizon as some terrible thing began to tear itself asunder in its fury. “What will happen to us?”

“We’ll be a thousand different people and a thousand different things, and they’ll all be wonderful, and all of them will be loved too much to ever die.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Sherlock told him already feeling the world go solid around him, already feeling pavement under his feet.

Hamish laughed. “And yet here you are.”

There was a tingle like an electric shock and Sherlock stood next to John and Mary on a street corner. Somehow he knew they were back even as he wondered back from where even as the ghost of memory solidified as he focused on it. Three bright sons, Molly and Greg, that he could be happy. There was a voice in the back of his mind, distant, almost fading, that told him to go on then and be happy. It sounded a bit like John if more tired and more affectionate.

“That’s it then?” Mary said, looking a bit surprised at the whole thing and a little put out she had missed the action even as her brow furrowed trying to hold the memory.

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “That was it.”


End file.
